^•^'ES  of 

MTSSTONARY 


...J  m.jr%. 


-EADERSHIP 


OCT  21  1914 


BV  3700  .S634  1914 
Speer,  Robert  E.  1867-1947 
Studies  of  missionary 
leadership 


STUDIES  of 
MISSIONARY 
LEADERSHIP 


The  Smyth  Lectures  for  19 13 


Delivered  before  the  Columbia  Theological  Seminary, 
Columbia,  South  Carolina 


ROBERT   E.   SPEER 


PHILADELPHIA 

THE  WESTMINSTER  PRESS 
1914 


Copyright,   1914, 
By  F.  M.  Braselmann 


CONTENTS 


Foreword 7 

STUDY  ONE 

Walter  Lowrie  and  the  Foundation  of  the  Missionary 
Enterprise 11 

y^"  STUDY  TWO 

Jeremiah  Evarts  and  the  Early  Problems  of  Missions..     49 

STUDY  THREE 

Paul  Sawayama  and  the  Principle  of  the  Independent 
National  Church 93 

STUDY  FOUR 

Nehemiah  Goreh  and  the  Relation  of  Western  Forms 
OF  Christian  Experience  to  the  Indian  Mind 135 


STUDY  FIVE 

David  Trumbull,  the  Friend  of  Chile,  and  the  Problems 
OF  THE  Foreign  Community  and  Religious  Liberty 181 


/  STUDY  SIX 

RuFus  Anderson  the  Foremost  American  Missionary  Ad- 
ministrator     237 


V 


[5] 


FOREWORD 


It  is  not  by  prescriptions  of  modes  of  action  that 
the  world's  work  gets  itself  done,  but  by  the  power 
of  God  operating  through  men.  Some  one  once 
asked  John  Lawrence,  on  whose  iron  will  and  im- 
movable faith  in  God  and  his  righteousness  the 
Indian  mutiny  broke  like  foam  upon  a  cliff,  by  what 
methods  he  achieved  such  unique  results  in  his  ad- 
ministration of  the  Punjab,  the  most  wonderful 
piece  of  provincial  administration  in  modern  times, 
if  not  in  human  history.  "It  is  not  my  methods,'* 
Lawrence  replied;  "it  is  my  men."  Methods  of 
action  were  of  small  significance  when  the  men  acting 
were  John  Lawrence  and  Henry,  his  brother,  and 
Donald  McLeod  and  Herbert  Edwardes  and  Richard 
Temple  and  their  associates.  Such  men  were  foun- 
tains of  ever  fresh  and  varying  modes  of  achievement. 
Problems  unfolded  their  solutions  before  them  simply 
because  these  men,  with  their  luminous  and  creative 
energy,  moved  forward  upon  them.  Men  succeed 
not  because  they  use  successful  methods.  They  use 
such  methods  simply  because  they  open  themselves 
to  the  energy  of  the  divine  will,  which  is  ever  seeking 
unhindered  channels  for  its  flow  through  human  Uves. 

It  is  with  some  men  of  this  type  that  we  are  to 
meet  in  these  lectures.     We  are  to  study  in  them 

[7] 


FOREWORD 

some  of  the  great  elemental  problems  of  the  Church, 
in  her  work  of  accomplishing  the  world  mission  of 
Christianity.  Three  of  the  six  men  whom  we  shall 
consider,  the  first  two  and  the  last,  were  men  who 
dealt  with  the  world  problems  of  Christianity  from 
the  base  of  the  Church  at  home.  The  other  three 
men  worked  with  some  of  the  most  fundamental 
issues  of  the  missionary  task  on  the  foreign  field. 
One  of  these  last  was  an  American  who  gave  his  life 
to  the  problems  of  the  foreign  community  and  rehg- 
ious  liberty,  another  a  Japanese  who  Hved  and  died 
in  the  triumphant  solution  of  the  problem  of  the 
independent  national  Church,  and  the  third  a  Hindu 
who  brought  his  rare  mind  to  Christ  and  sought  by  a 
long  and  weary  way  for  that  simplicity  of  faith  which 
was  nearer  to  him  than  his  own  soul. 

The  questions  which  we  are  to  consider  are  ques- 
tions of  the  foreign  missionary  enterprise,  but  they 
are  also  the  central  questions  of  the  life  of  the  Church 
at  home.  What  are  the  secrets  of  leadership?  What 
are  the  great  aims  and  methods  of  the  Church's 
undertaking?  How  can  the  Christian  Church  be 
made  anywhere  a  living  and  enlarging  power,  draw- 
ing its  nourishment  from  above  and  beneath,  from 
God  and  the  people,  without  weakening  support 
from  the  side?  What  is  the  universal  and  essential 
kernel  of  the  gospel,  and  what  the  racial  or  national 
husk?  How  much  may  a  human  life  ask  God  to  do 
through  it  and  in  its  own  time?  These  are  not  ques- 
tions of  a  far-away  work.  They  are  the  living  issues 
of  our  own  land  and  our  own  time  and  our  own  lives. 

R.  E.  S. 

[8] 


STUDY  ONE 


[9] 


Hon.  Walter  Lowrie 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

AND     THE     FOUNDATION     OF     THE     MISSIONARY 
ENTERPRISE 


We  are  to  begin  with  some  of  the  men  of  faith  and 
courage  who  dared  to  project  the  missionary  enter- 
prise, imperihng  in  doing  so  their  reputation  for  sound 
judgment  and  incurring  responsibihties  which  still  out- 
reach our  comprehension,  and  which  far  transcended 
their  own — men  whose  devotion  and  ability  were  as 
necessary  to  the  successful  inauguration  of  the  new 
movement  as  the  heroism  and  genius  of  the  first 
missionaries  themselves.  Indeed,  it  has  been  true 
throughout  that  the  missionary  movement  has  been 
given  its  direction  and  has  achieved  its  effects  scarcely 
more  through  its  agents  on  the  field  than  through  the 
men  who  have  been  its  representatives  and  admin- 
istrators at  home.  At  the  outset  Carey  recognized 
the  necessity  of  such  cooperation,  and  it  was  agreed 
between  him  and  Fuller  and  those  who  aided  Fuller 
that  they  would  carry  forward  a  joint  enterprise  in 
which  holding  the  ropes  at  home  was  recognized  as  a 
missionary  service  as  distinct  and  essential  as  going 
down  into  the  mine  abroad.  Andrew  Fuller,  who 
entered  into  this  relation  with  Carey,  was  the  first 
of  the  foreign  mission  secretaries.  At  the  outset 
he  was  a  young  man,  only  seven  years  older  than 
Carey,  and  of  Httle  greater  prominence,  though  he 

["] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

was  beginning  to  attract  attention  by  the  qualities 
which  soon  made  him  one  of  the  most  notable  men 
of  his  time.  ''When  we  began  in  1792,"  as  he  said 
later,  ''there  was  Httle  or  no  respectability  among  us, 
not  so  much  as  a  squire  to  sit  in  the  chair,  or  an  orator 
to  address  him  with  speeches.  Hence  good  Dr. 
Stennett  advised  the  London  ministers  to  stand  aloof 
and  not  commit  themselves."^  The  enterprise  was 
to  become  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  the  movements 
of  church  history,  and  the  men  who  founded  it  were 
to  win  abiding  fame.  However,  it  was  not  the  antici- 
pation of  this,  which  the  boldest  faith  scarcely  fore- 
saw, but  a  firm  conviction  as  to  the  principles  which 
required  the  enterprise  that  won  Fuller's  adhesion 
to  it.  Indeed,  Fuller  was  the  great  force  in  disclosing 
these  principles  and  obtaining  their  recognition  in 
the  Church  at  home.  He  was  a  farmer's  son  and 
self-educated.  Like  Carey,  he  had  been  unable  to 
reconcile  "the  grim  dead  theology  of  his  church  with 
the  new  life  and  liberty  which  had  come  to  him  direct 
from  the  Spirit  of  Christ  and  from  his  Word."  The 
Baptists  were  as  dead  as  the  Established  Church. 
The  evangelical  gospel  was  almost  unknown.  Among 
the  more  earnest  Baptists  a  hyper-Calvinistic  view 
prevailed  that  forbade  missionary  zeal  because  it 
denied  the  duty,  or  even  the  possibility,  of  every 
man's  acceptance  of  the  gospel,  and  asserted  accord- 
ingly the  futility  of  preaching  it  to  every  man.  Be- 
ginning with  his  gospel  "worthy  of  all  acceptation," 
Fuller  probably  did  more  by  his  writings  and  his 

'  Marshman,  "Life  and  Times  of  Carey,  Marshman  and  Ward,"  Vol.  I, 
p.  17. 

[12] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

addresses  than  any  other  one  man  to  lay  the  doc- 
trinal basis  of  the  modern  missionary  enterprise.  It 
was  his  first  treatise  which  had  brought  to  a  head  the 
thinking  of  Carey,  who  had  reasoned,  "If  it  be  the 
duty  of  all  men,  when  the  gospel  comes,  to  believe 
unto  salva|iion,  then  it  is  the  duty  of  those  who  are 
intrusted  with  the  gospel  to  endeavor  to  make  it 
known  among  all  nations  for  the  obedience  of  faith. "^ 
When  the  Baptist  Missionary  Society  was  organized 
at  Kettering  in  1792  Fuller  was  appointed  secretary. 
For  a  quarter  of  a  century  he  filled  the  ofiice,  setting 
an  ideal  for  all  such  service  since.  He  was  a  man  of 
executive  energy.  He  once  said  to  Ryland  and 
Sutcliff,  who,  with  Carey  and  Hogg  and  himself,  con- 
stituted the  first  committee:  ''You  excel  me  in  wisdom, 
especially  in  forseeing  difficulties.  I,  therefore,  want 
to  advise  with  you  both,  but  to  execute  without  you." 
His  missionary  relations  to  Carey,  when  the  latter 
had  gone  out,  became  a  great  reflex  blessing.  If  his 
principles  led  to  the  enterprise,  the  enterprise  reacted 
to  confirm  and  enrich  the  principles.  Chalmers' 
relation  to  Duff,  of  which  I  shall  speak  later,  acted 
in  the  same  way.  In  comforting  the  erratic  Thomas, 
Carey's  first  associate,  Fuller  wrote  of  what  his 
missionary  interest  had  done  for  him  in  the  midst 
of  spiritual  death  and  despondency:  "Before  this  I 
did  Httle  but  pine  over  my  misery,  but  since  I  have 
betaken  myself  to  greater  activity  for  God  my 
strength  has  been  recovered  and  my  soul  replen- 
ished."^ 

»  Smith,  "Life  of  William  Carey,"  p.  42. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  99. 

[■3] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

But  Fuller  gave  as  much  as  he  got.  He  had  clear 
and  independent  judgments  as  to  the  work  of  the 
Serampore  missionaries.  He  made  his  own  original 
proposals.  He  condemned  some  of  their  courses  of 
action  where  he  felt  that  his  opinion  was  clearer  and 
less  deflected  than  theirs.  He  put  forth  an  influence 
in  their  behalf  and  in  behalf  of  all  such  effort  in  India, 
in  modifying  the  character  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany's administration,  which  was  one  of  the  great 
factors  in  the  improvement  of  the  company's  policy 
toward  missions.  He  carried  on  a  powerful  home 
propaganda,  and  in  1807  used  to  excellent  effect  the 
opportunity  of  a  bitter  pubHc  discussion  of  the  in- 
trusion of  the  missionaries  upon  the  religions  of  India. 
On  one  trip,  in  1808,  he  preached  forty- two  mission- 
ary sermons  in  six  weeks,  and  collected  two  thousand 
pounds  for  the  Serampore  translations.  His  own  reaHty 
of  spiritual  character  enabled  him  to  give  the  mission- 
aries the  freshest  and  most  fruitful  spiritual  counsel. 
After  the  great  fire  which  destroyed,  their  press  and 
translations  he  wrote: 

This  fire  has  given  your  undertaking  a  celebrity  which 
nothing  else  could;  a  celebrity  which,  after  all,  makes  me 
tremble.  I  see  the  eagerness  of  men  after  this  celebrity 
passing  all  bounds,  and  we  are  men.  I  see  great  undertak- 
ings blasted  apparently  by  this  cause.  Ought  we  not  to 
tremble?  The  public  is  now  giving  us  their  praises.  Eight 
hundred  guineas  have  been  offered  for  Dr.  Carey's  likeness. 
If  we  inhale  this  incense,  will  not  the  Lord  be  offended  and 
withdraw  his  blessing,  and  then  where  are  we?  Ought  we 
not  to  tremble?  Surely  we  need  more  grace  to  go  through 
good  report  than  evil.  I  have  less  jealousy  of  you  than  of 
ourselves,  but  we  are  all  in  danger.     When  you  pitched  your 

[M] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

tents  at  Serampore,  you  said,  *'Wc  will  not  accumulate 
riches,  but  devote  all  to  God  for  the  salvation  of  the  heathen." 
God  has  given  you  what  you  desired,  and  what  you  desired 
not.  Blessed  men,  God  will  yet  bless  you,  and  make  you 
a  blessing.  I  and  others  of  us  may  die,  but  God  will  surely 
visit  you.  Only  beware  of  flattery  and  applause,  for  now 
you  may  expect  a  tide  of  this  to  try  you.  You  have  stood 
your  ground  through  evil  report;  may  you  stand  it  under 
good  report.  Many  who  have  endured  the  first  have  failed 
under  the  last.  The  icy  mountain  that  can  stand  the  win- 
ter's blast  may  melt  before  the  summer's  sun.  Expect  to 
be  highly  applauded,  bitterly  reproached,  greatly  moved 
and  much  tried  in  every  way.  O  that  having  done  all, 
you  may  stand. "^   . 

When  Marshman  once  felt  aggrieved  by  a  judg- 
ment of  Fuller's  which  disapproved  of  certain  letters 
of  his,  and  Carey  had  written  in  his  behalf,  Fuller 
replied : 

As  to  the  correspondence  with  Mr.  Ricketts,  in  remark- 
ing on  which  you  consider  me  just  but  not  merciful,  having 
expressed  my  thoughts,  I  thought  no  more  on  the  subject, 
and  I  hope  Brother  Marshman  was  not  greatly  wounded. 
I  feel  my  deficiency  in  not  being  able  always  to  express  my 
sentiments  so  as  not  to  "break  the  head."  I  hope  I  need 
not  say  I  love  you  all,  and  hope  to  live  and  die  with  you.^ 


And  in  his  last  letter  to  Serampore,  addressed  to 
Marshman,  he  refers  to  the  matter:  "Brother  Carey 
seemed  to  think  me  severe  in  my  remarks.  It  might 
be  so.     This  is  a  fault  of  which  I  have  often  had  to 

1  Marshman,  "Life  and  Times  of  Carey,  Marshman  and  Ward,"  Vol.  I, 
p.  472  f. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  508. 

[•5] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

repent.     I  hope,  however,  that  there  are  no  painful 
feelings  left  on  your  mind." 

Fuller  died  on  May  i,  1815,  at  the  comparatively 
early  age  of  sixty-two. 

His  athletic  frame  and  robust  constitution  gave  promise 
of  a  longer  life,  but  he  had  worn  himself  out  in  the  cause  of 
Christian  benevolence,  and  more  especially  in  the  service 
of  the  mission.  The  important  influence  of  Mr.  Fuller's 
labors  on  the  character  of  his  own  denomination,  and  the 
interests  of  Christian  truth,  and  the  progress  of  missions,  it 
would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate.  If  the  man  who  gives  the 
impulse  of  improvement  not  only  to  his  own  age,  but  to  suc- 
ceeding generations,  be  justly  esteemed  great,  few  men  have 
been  more  fully  entitled  to  that  distinction  than  Mr.  Fuller. 
He  found  his  own  denomination,  with  some  bright  excep- 
tions, bewildered  in  the  mazes  of  hyper- Calvinism,  and 
stagnant  in  Christian  benevolence.  By  his  exertions  in  the 
pulpit,  and  through  the  press,  he  introduced  sounder  and 
more  elevated  views,  and  quickened  it  into  evangeHcal 
activity.  The  Baptist  denomination  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  more  indebted  for  the  position  it  occupies  as  a 
Christian  agency,  at  home  and  abroad,  to  the  labors  of  Mr. 
Fuller  than  to  those  of  any  other  single  individual.^ 

Dr.  Smith  says  of  him: 

Andrew  Fuller  was  not  only  the  first  of  foreign  mission 
secretaries;  he  was  a  model  for  all.  To  him  his  work  was 
spiritual  Hfe,  and  hence,  though  the  most  active  preacher 
and  writer  of  his  day,  he  was  like  Carey  in  this,  that  his  work- 
ing day  was  twice  as  long  as  that  of  most  men,  and  he  could 
spend  half  of  his  time  in  the  frequent  journeys  all  over  the 
kingdom  to  raise  funds,  in  repeated  campaigns  in  London 
to  secure  toleration,  and  in  abundant  letters  to  the  mis- 
sionaries.    His  relation  to  the  committee,  up  to  the  last, 

»  Marshman,  "Life  and  Times  of  Carey,  Marshman  and  Ward,"  Vol.  II, 
pp.  101-103. 

[.6] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

was  equally  exemplary.  In  the  very  earliest  missionary 
organization  in  England  it  is  due  to  him  that  the  line  was 
clearly  drawn  between  the  deliberative  and  judicial  function 
which  is  that  of  the  members,  and  the  executive  which  is 
that  of  the  secretary.  Wisdom  and  efficiency,  clearness  of 
perception  and  promptitude  of  action,  were  thus  combined. 
Fuller's,  too,  was  the  special  merit  of  realizing  that,  while  a 
missionary  committee  or  church  are  fellow  workers  only 
with  the  men  and  women  abroad,  the  Serampore  Brother- 
hood was  a  self-supporting,  and  to  that  extent  a  self-govern- 
ing body  in  a  sense  true  of  no  foreign  mission  ever  since. ^ 

But,  above  all,  he  was  a  man  of  God.  That  is  the 
first  requirement  of  effective  missionary  adminis- 
tration. Devout  as  the  missionaries  were,  the  secre- 
tary at  home  was  yet  more  notable  as  a  spiritual  force, 
a  man  of  energy  and  independent  devotion.  He 
was  a  spiritual  leader  of  the  Church.  There  should 
be  such  a  superior  moral  influence  in  every  mission- 
ary administration.  It  saves  authority  from  authori- 
tativeness,  and  it  bathes  relations  in  warmth  and 
love.  Sutcliff's  dying  words  had  been,  *T  wish  I  had 
prayed  more . ' '     Fuller  had  often  commented  on  these : 

I  do  not  suppose  he  wished  he  had  prayed  more  frequently, 
but  more  spiritually.  I  wish  I  had  prayed  more  for  the  in- 
fluences of  the  Holy  Spirit;  I  might  have  enjoyed  more  of 
the  power  of  vital  godhness.  I  wish  I  had  prayed  more  for 
the  assistance  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  studying  and  preaching 
my  sermons;  I  might  have  seen  more  of  the  blessing  of  God 
attending  my  ministry.  I  wish  I  had  prayed  more  for  the 
outpouring  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to  attend  the  labors  of  our 
friends  in  India;  I  might  have  witnessed  more  of  the  effects 
of  their  efforts  in  the  conversion  of  the  heathen.^ 

1  Smith,  "Life  of  William  Carey,"  p.  310  f. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  309,  footnote. 

[■7] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

In  the  Scotch  Church  the  first  great  missionary 
leader  at  home  was  Thomas  Chalmers,  but  Chalmers 
did  not  fill  in  the  Scotch  Church  and  in  his  relations 
to  Alexander  Duff  the  relation  sustained  by  Fuller 
to  the  Baptist  Mission  and  William  Carey.  Dr. 
Inglis  was  Dr.  Duff's  official  correspondent,  and  in  a 
real  sense  the  founder  of  the  India  Mission  of  the 
Scotch  Church.  But  Chahners  very  well  illustrates 
a  different  type  of  home  service.  He  sustained  no 
secreterial  relationship  to  the  missionaries,  but  he 
was  a  member  of  the  Missionary  Committee,  and  he 
was  the  greatest  force  of  his  day  in  the  home  Hfe  of 
the  Church.  It  happens  too  often  that  such  men  are 
so  engrossed  in  church  poHtical  issues,  or  theological 
controversy,  or  some  form  of  home  activity,  that 
they  have  scarcely  room  in  their  minds  for  the  largest 
interests  of  all.  I  could  easily  illustrate  what  I 
mean  by  personal  instances.  Or,  if  such  great  men 
express  a  missionary  interest,  it  is  rather  in  the  way 
of  vindicating  their  catholic  and  comprehensive  intel- 
ligence than  in  the  way  of  such  a  direct  and  passion- 
ate devotion  as  alone  amounts  to  much  in  driving 
forward  the  greatest  and  the  most  resisted  of  all  the 
enterprises  of  the  Church.  Chalmers  had  a  deep 
personal  interest  in  the  mission.  Duff  had  been  a 
student  under  him  at  Aberdeen  and  one  of  his 
favorite  pupils.  To  Chalmers  Duff  wrote  for  advice 
when  the  call  to  India  came  to  him.  To  Chalmers 
he  wrote  his  last  letter  before  leaving  England;  and 
he  wrote  on  the  voyage  to  Capetown,  urging  him  to 
use  his  influence  that  the  wreck  of  Duff's  ship  "may 
not  be  permitted  to  cool  zeal  or  damp  exertion,  but 

[i8] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

may  be  improved,  to  kindle  a  new  flame  throughout 
the  Church  and  cause  it  to  burn  inextinguishably. "^ 
The  first  member  of  his  committee  on  whom  he  called 
when  he  returned  to  Scotland  in  1835  was  Chalmers, 
and  during  all  his  campaign  at  home  Chalmers  gave 
him  his  constant  support.  When  he  sailed  for  India 
again  Chalmers  gave  the  parting  address,  as  he  had 
done  ten  years  before.  He  defended  Duff's  method 
abroad,  approved  his  financial  poKcy  at  home  and 
brushed  away  the  idea  of  any  disagreement  between 
home  and  foreign  missions: 

Our  two  causes,  our  two  committees,  might  work  into 
each  other's  hands.  Should  the  first  take  the  precedency  and 
traverse  for  collections  the  whole  of  Scotland,  the  second 
would  only  find  the  ground  more  softened  and  prepared  for 
an  abundant  produce  to  itself.  It  acts  not  by  exhaustion — 
it  acts  by  fermentation.^ 

When  the  disruption  came,  Chalmers  rose  up  as  a 
rock  against  the  idea  of  any  curtailment  of  the 
missions.  The  missionaries,  without  exception,  stood 
with  the  Free  Church.  All  the  properties  and  en- 
dowments remained  with  the  EstabHshed  Church. 
It  was  necessary  to  begin  anew  at  home.  Surely 
the  mission  would  have  to  be  sacrificed  for  a  while. 
Gardner  Spring  made  some  such  argument  under 
far  less  warranting  circumstances  before  the  General 
Assembly  of  the  American  Presbyterian  Church 
when  he  advocated  a  postponement  of  foreign  mis- 
sions for  a  few  generations,  as  though  fifty  had  not 
sufficed.     "I  state  my  confident  behef,"  wrote  Chal- 

i  Smith,  "Alexander  Duff,"  Vol.  I,  p.  79  f. 
» Ibid.,  p.  385  f. 

[^9] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

mers  to  Duff,  ''that,  notwithstanding  the  engrossment 
of  our  affairs  at  home,  the  cause  of  our  missions  will 
prove  as  dear  and  be  as  liberally  supported  as  ever 
by  the  people  of  Scotland."^ 

It  was  upon  the  lines  of  Chalmer's  Kfe  that  Duff 
himself  moved.  His  eloquence  was  almost  the  rep- 
lica of  Duff's.  A  stranger  picking  up  the  addresses 
of  the  two  men  would  probably  think  that  they  were 
the  utterances  of  one  mind.  In  his  comprehensive- 
ness, in  his  loss  of  the  sense  of  perspective,  in  reading 
the  whole  human  movement  into  his  own  plannings 
and  speculations,  in  his  extension  of  his  nationaHstic 
conceptions  into  universals,  in  his  loftiness,  almost 
grandioseness,  which  was  the  frill  of  real  practical 
greatness  in  that  day,  in  his  conscious  ampHtude  of 
speech  and  opinion,  in  his  spiritual  humility  and 
simplicity.  Duff  was  the  duplicate  of  Chalmers,  and 
took  his  place  in  the  Free  Church  as  its  great  leader 
when  Chalmers  had  passed  away.  To  the  character 
and  the  value  of  Chalmers'  missionary  influence  Duff 
bore  the  highest  testimony  in  a  letter  of  April  7, 
1847,  ^o  Dr.  John  Buchanan: 

It  is  impossible  for  me  to  forget  that  one  of  the  first  steps 
in  his  splendid  career  as  a  Christian  philanthropist  was  his 
unanswered  and  unanswerable  defense  of  Bible  and  mis- 
sionary societies.  It  was,  indeed,  a  defense  which  swept 
away  the  wretched  sophisms  of  the  indifferent  and  ungodly 
like  chaff  before  the  whirlwind.  It  demonstrated  to  the 
world  that,  if  such  societies  threatened  to  become  popular, 
it  was  not  from  poverty  of  intellect  on  the  part  of  their 
friends  or  from  drivelling,  irrational  pietism  on  the  part  of 
their  champions.    From  Bibles  the  transition  was  easy  to  the 

1  Smith,  "Alexander  Duff,"  Vol.  II,  p.  12  f. 

[20] 


I 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

translators  and  distributors  of  Bibles  and  the  promulgators 
of  Bible  truth.  Accordingly,  at  a  time  when  missions  were 
most  despised  and  missionaries  held  most  despicable  by 
the  great  and  the  wise  and  the  mighty  of  this  world,  he 
stood  forth,  the  intrepid  and  triumphant  vindicator  of  both. 
In  his  two  discourses,  entitled  ''The  Two  Great  Instruments 
Appointed  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel"  and  "The 
Utility  of  Missions  Ascertained  by  Experience,"  preached  and 
published  upward  of  thirty  years  ago,  there  are  bursts  of  elo- 
quence which  he  himself  never  subsequently  surpassed; 
downright  genuine  eloquence,  which  does  not  lead  us  to  the 
goal  by  slow  marches  of  argument,  or  parade  of  verbal  logic, 
or  ingenious  devices  of  subtlety,  but  flashes  upon  the  subject 
with  the  revealing  power  of  heaven's  lightning,  and  at  once 
makes  every  understanding  to  perceive  and  every  heart  to 
feel.  In  the  whole  range  of  missionary  literature  it  would 
perhaps  be  difficult  to  meet  with  any  treatises  which,  within 
a  shorter  compass  than  that  occupied  by  the  discourses  now 
named,  portray  more  strikingly  the  unrivalled  claims  of  the 
Bible,  exhibit  a  finer  dehneation  of  the  missionary  char- 
acter or  embody  a  more  powerful  exposition  and  defense 
of  the  great  object  of  the  missionary  enterprise.  .  .  . 

And  now,  if  by  general  consent,  he  who  has  been  so  sud- 
denly laid  low  was  long  acknowledged,  in  point  of  real  in- 
tellectual and  moral  greatness  combined,  to  be  the  master 
mind  of  his  own  country,  if  not  his  own  age,  it  only  remains 
to  be  added,  in  justice  to  the  character  of  the  departed, 
that  though  not  a  missionary  himself,  in  the  ordinary  tech- 
nical use  of  that  term,  or  even  no  very  active  member  of  any 
missionary  board  or  committee,  yet,  in  all  that  constitutes 
the  real  grandeur  of  wide,  all-comprehending,  GodHke 
philanthropy,  he  has  been  for  years  the  leading  missionary 
spirit  of  Christendom. 

Standing,  as  we  do,  in  this  great  metropolis  of  Asiatic 
heathenism,  surrounded  by  myriads  that  are  perishing  for 
lack  of  knowledge — myriads  amounting  in  the  aggregate 
to  more  than  half  of  the  race  of  man — it  need  not  be  won- 
dered at  that  the  mind  should  rapidly  pass  over  all  other 

[21] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

features,  however  brilliant,  and  instinctively  fasten  on  the 
missionary  element  in  the  character  of  our  late  reverend 
father  and  friend.^ 

The  mission  cause  needs  such  representatives  as 
truly  as  it  needs  its  Careys  and  its  Duffs.  It  was  a 
great  thing  to  have  the  dominant  personality  in  the 
church  the  greatest  and  best  informed  advocate  of  its 
foreign  missions.  We  have  not  seen  this  spectacle 
in  any  American  church  since  the  days  of  Charles 
Hodge. 

»  Smith,  "Alexander  Duff,"  Vol.  II,  pp.  113-116. 


["] 


II 

The  first  foreign  missions  of  the  American  churches 
were  administered  by  an  altogether  different  type  of 
man  from  either  Fuller  or  Chalmers.  The  two  most 
conspicuous  of  the  early  missionary  secretaries  of 
our  own  country  were  two  laymen,  both  trained  as 
lawyers  or  pubHc  men,  and  giving  by  their  gravity 
of  personal  character  and  their  directness  of  spiritual 
view  a  distinct  caste  to  the  missions  of  the  two 
great  churches  they  controlled.  One  was  Walter 
Lowrie  and  the  other  Jeremiah  Evarts.  For  thirty- 
two  years  Walter  Lowrie  was  secretary  of  the  Pres- 
byterian Board,  and  Evarts  gave  his  great  abiHties 
for  twenty  years,  first  as  treasurer  and  then  as  secre- 
tary, to  estabHshing  at  home  and  abroad  the  work 
of  the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign 
Missions. 

Walter  Lowrie  was  born  in  Edinburgh,  Scotland, 
Dec.  lo,  1784,  as  he  says,  "of  poor,  respectable  and 
pious"  parents.  The  same  conjunction  served  him 
that  David  Livingstone  chose,  when  he  rejoicingly 
recognized  that  the  parents  whom  God  had  given  him 
were  "poor  and  pious."  When  Walter  Lowrie  was 
eight  years  old  the  family  emigrated  to  the  United 
States,  and  were  among  the  pioneer  settlers  in  central 
and  western  Pennsylvania.  There  the  boy  was 
severely  disciplined,  working  in  the  forests  and  on  the 
farm,  making  a  gristmill  or  sawing  wood,  learning  to 
read  from  his  mother  and  picking  up  at  winter  schools 

[23] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

during  a  few  months  of  the  year  a  Httle  fuller  knowl- 
edge. Many  a  long  winter  evening  he  spent  study- 
ing ''Morse's  Geography"  in  two  large  octavo  volumes. 
''With  the  historical  books  of  the  Bible,"  he  says,  "I 
was  well  acquainted,  but  I  had  very  little  taste  for 
the  New  Testament  Scriptures." 

He  was  converted  in  one  of  the  local  manifesta- 
tions of  the  great  revivals  at  the  dawn  of  the  last 
century,  when  he  personally  experienced  the  curious 
bodily  disturbances  which  characterized  those  re- 
vivals. His  account  of  the  matter  is  of  interest  as 
coming  from  one  whose  Christian  Hfe  was  always 
exceptionally  grave  and  sedate: 

In  1803  various  rumors  and  reports  reached  us  of  revivals 
of  religion  in  Kentucky  and  other  places,  accompanied  with 
most  extraordinary  bodily  exercises.  This  work  was  brought 
to  our  neighborhood  in  the  summer,  when  I  saw  it  for  the 
first  time.  The  subject  was  a  young  woman,  an  acquaintance 
of  one  of  my  sisters,  to  whose  home  I  had  come  on  a  visit 
the  day  before.  On  seeing  it  I  was  very  much  surprised,  but 
perfectly  at  a  loss  to  account  for  such  involuntary  agitation. 
It  continued  during  the  whole  of  the  sermon.  Nor  was 
I  inattentive  to  the  words  of  the  preacher.  Rev.  Robert 
Lea.  He  spoke  with  great  earnestness  and  solemnity,  and 
every  word  seemed  to  reach  my  heart.  There  was  left  a 
deep  impression  that  I  was  indeed  a  sinner  in  the  sight  of 
God.  We  had  regular  preaching  at  home  every  alternate 
Sunday,  and  every  sermon  deepened  my  distress  of  mind. 
Every  evening,  after  service,  our  pastor,  Rev.  Robert  Johns- 
ton, had  a  prayer  meeting  at  his  own  house.  At  one  of  these 
meetings  the  exercises  of  my  mind  became  extremely  pain- 
ful and  distressing.  Soon  after  the  service  had  commenced 
I  was  struck  with  this  extraordinary  influence,  as  were 
several  others  about  the  same  time.  To  convey  a  correct 
idea  of  this  sensation  to  others  is  perhaps  impossible.     In 

[24] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

an  instant  I  felt  that  the  will  had  no  power  or  control  over 
the  muscles  of  the  body.  I  fell  backward  and  suffered  violent 
agitations,  particularly  of  the  arms,  the  muscles  of  the  breast 
and  upper  part  of  the  body.  There  was  no  sickness,  no 
pain  and  the  faculties  of  the  mind  were  not  the  least  ob- 
scured; if  any  change  was  felt,  it  seemed  to  be  an  acuteness 
of  perception,  more  than  usual,  as  to  everything  around 
me.  Two  of  my  neighbors  immediately  raised  me  and  sup- 
por^d  me  between  them  during  the  evening.  When  the 
service  was  ended  the  influence  left  me,  and  I  walked  home 
with  several  others,  but  preferred  to  be  silent  rather  than  to 
converse  with  them.  For  about  six  weeks  the  exercises  of 
my  mind  were  painful  and  often  distressing.  I  then  ob- 
tained, or  thought  I  obtained,  "peace  with  God  through  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ."  I  know  not  that  further  details  would 
promote  any  good  purpose.  It  may  be  very  satisfactory  for 
a  Christian  to  be  able  to  say,  "At  such  a  time  and  place  I 
was  born  again." 

I  do  not  doubt  that  there  are  such  cases.  I  do  not  now 
set  so  much  value  on  such  an  abiHty  as  I  did  formerly;  nor 
do  I  know  that  any  Christian  was  ever  able  to  derive  much 
consolation  from  this  kind  of  knowledge.  It  is  a  far  clearer 
point  to  me  that  the  follower  of  Jesus  Christ  will  derive  more 
true  comfort  from  a  constant  discharge  of  his  duty  toward 
God  and  toward  man,  in  the  exercises  of  faith,  and  under 
the  influence  of  deep  humility,  with  watchfulness  and  prayer, 
than  he  will  derive  by  looking  back  to  the  state  of  his  feel- 
ings at  the  time  of  his  supposed  consecration  to  Christ.  It 
is  the  duty  of  the  Christian  to  have  his  evidences  always 
bright,  and  when  they  become  otherwise,  to  seek  again  the 
highway  from  which  he  has  departed.  For  the  soul  to  take 
comfort  when  in  a  cold  and  lifeless  state,  from  its  former  ex- 
perience, is  a  comfort  not  free  from  danger,  and  not,  at  least 
very  clearly,  indicated  in  the  Word  of  God.  Had  David 
quieted  his  fears  after  the  murder  of  Uriah  by  referring  to 
his  former  experience,  had  he  even  taken  comfort  to  him- 
self from  the  near  and  intimate  communion  with  God  he 
had  often  experienced,  we  are  warranted  in  saying  he  would 

[^5] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

have  shown  far  less  evidence  of  true  religion  than  does  the 
spirit  which  breathes  in  every  Hne  of  the  Fifty-first  Psalm. 

About  the  time  I  obtained  a  hope  of  an  interest  in  the 
Saviour  the  mysterious  influence,  which  caused  the  bodily 
agitation,  left  me.  Nor  was  I  ever  subject  to  it  again. 
In  the  fall  of  the  same  year  I  made  a  profession  of  religion, 
and  it  has  been  my  sincere  desire  to  Hve  agreeably  to  that 
profession;  but,  alas!  how  unfruitful  has  my  life  so  far  been 
in  the  eyes  of  a  pure  and  holy  God!  How  often  have  I 
departed  from  the  way  of  holiness!  But  by  his  grace  I 
remain  unto  this  day,  and  his  grace  is  still  able  to  sustain 
me  to  the  close  of  life,  and  give  me  an  abundant  entrance 
to  the  inheritance  of  the  saints  in  light.^ 

He  now  had  a  strong  desire  to  study  for  the  ministry, 
but  could  not  be  spared  from  the  family  support. 
By  selling  lumber  and  rendering  other  help,  however, 
he  succeeded  in  doing  what  was  needed  and  went  off 
to  study  with  a  neighboring  minister.  His  teacher 
had  a  large  family  and  a  full  home,  so  Lowrie  built 
himself  a  small  twelve  by  twelve  cabin  just  adjoin- 
ing. After  several  years  of  study  he  opened  a  school 
in  Butler,  Pennsylvania,  where  he  taught  forty  pupils, 
and  acted  as  clerk  of  the  county  commissioners. 
Several  months  after  taking  charge  of  the  school 
he  married  the  daughter  of  his  former  teacher. 
Rev.  John  McPherrin.  I  have  been  told  that  the 
parents  were  not  wholly  ready  and  that  there  were 
some  of  the  features  of  an  elopement  about  the 
marriage.  I  believe  Walter  put  his  bride  on  a  horse 
and  rode  away  with  her.  This  has  always  given 
me  a  more  tender  and  human  interest  in  one  whose 
after  life  was  a  model  of  grave  demeanor.     I  spoke 

'  Lowrie,  "Memoirs  of  the  Honorable  Walter  Lowrie,"  pp.  7-10. 

[26] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

to  Dr.  John  C.  Lowrie  once  about  this  matter.  *'Yes/' 
he  said,  ''there  were  some  providential  circumstances 
in  connection  with  my  father's  marriage."  Perhaps 
it  was  the  circumstances  of  the  rather  energetic 
marriage  and  the  increasing  interest  of  the  young 
schoolmaster  in  civil  affairs  as  seen  in  his  clerkship, 
and  the  opportunities  for  a  prosperous  work  as  a  sur- 
veyor, which  led  Lowrie  to  give  up  his  plans  for  the 
ministry.  In  1811,  three  years  after  his  marriage, 
he  was  sent  to  the  State  Legislature,  where  he  was 
kept  for  several  years,  one  year  in  the  House  of 
Representatives  and  six  in  the  State  Senate.  He 
was  a  useful  representative  and  served  as  chairman  of 
an  interstate  commission,  representing  Pennsyl- 
vania, Virginia,  Ohio,  Kentucky  and  Indiana,  to 
survey  and  clear  for  navigation  the  Ohio  River  from 
Pittsburgh  to  Louisville.  In  18 18,  while  still  in  the 
State  Senate,  he  was  elected  to  the  United  States 
Senate  for  the  full  term  of  six  years.  He  seems 
to  have  been  a  sober  and  useful  member,  taking  special 
interest  in  questions  of  finance  and  pubHc  lands  and 
in  the  problems  of  slavery  and  the  Indian.  He 
made  a  speech  against  the  Missouri  Compromise, 
which  he  closed  by  saying,  ''If  the  alternative  be 
this:  either  dissolution  of  the  Union  or  the  extension 
of  slavery  over  this  whole  western  country,  I,  for 
one,  will  choose  the  former."  Upon  the  completion 
of  his  term,  so  greatly  had  he  commended  himself 
to  the  Senate  that  he  was  elected  secretary  of  the 
Senate  and  held  that  office  from  1825  to  1836,  when 
he  resigned  it  to  become  secretary  of  the  Presby- 
terian Board  of  Foreign  Missions. 

[27] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

For  such  work  Mr.  Lowrie's  tastes  and  training 
had  been  specially  preparing  him.  In  Washington 
he  had  become  interested  in  the  American  Coloniza- 
tion Society.  That  Society  represented  a  real  mis- 
sionary impulse.  It  rested,  as  history  has  shown, 
upon  erroneous  principles,  but  it  was  a  good  school  of 
missionary  duty.  Mr.  Lowrie  was  active  also  in  a 
Congressional  Temperance  Society  and  held  a  weekly 
prayer  meeting  at  his  home  during  sessions  for 
members  of  Congress.  He  kept  up  his  interest  in 
Latin,  Greek  and  Hebrew,  and  about  the  time  he 
became  secretary  of  the  Senate  he  took  up  Chinese 
and  was  able,  by  teaching  himself,  in  a  few  years 
"to  make  translations  of  the  simpler  Chinese  works." 
In  1833  his  oldest  son  went  out  as  one  of  the  first 
missionaries  to  India.  Of  Mr.  Lowrie's  attitude 
toward  his  son's  action,  as  shown  at  the  farewell 
meeting  to  the  missionaries  and  their  wives  in  Phila- 
delphia, it  is  said: 

He  assured  his  Christian  friends  that  though  he  felt,  and 
felt  deeply,  at  parting,  .  .  .  yet,  instead  of  any  reluc- 
tancy  or  regret,  he  would  say  that  he  was  willing  and  even 
anxious  that  they  should  go;  if  there  were  any  station  that 
he  envied  it  was  that  which  they  were  about  to  assume; 
and  that  he  would  freely  part  with  every  child  he  had 
if  they  were  called  to  leave  their  native  shores  on  such 
an  errand.^ 

The  deep  religious  earnestness  of  his  character  and 
his  own  personal  meditation  on  the  world's  need  of 
the  gospel  further  prepared  him  for  the  call  that  came 
to  him.    Among  his  papers  of  the  year  1830  was  a 

>  Lowrie,  "Memoirs  of  the  Honorable  Walter  Lowrie,"  p.  29  f. 

[28] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

long  "Treatise  on  Divine  Revelation,"  which  con- 
tained the  result  of  his  religious  studies.  In  it  he 
spoke  with  a  rather  bold  view,  beyond  the  mind  of 
many,  on  the  subject  of  inspiration,  and  although  this 
was  two  generations  ago  it  is  interesting  to  note 
that  no  charge  of  heresy  was  ever  brought  against 
Walter  Lowrie.  In  the  same  treatise  Lowrie  con- 
sidered the  condition  of  the  world  without  the  gospel: 

With  these  remarks  [upon  the  Necessity  for  a  Divine 
Revelation]  let  us  look  at  the  condition  of  those  nations, 
ancient  and  modern,  which  were  without  the  light  of  divine 
revelation.  Through  a  long  course  of  ages,  what  has  un- 
assisted reason  achieved  for  them? 

The  Egyptians,  Greeks  and  Romans  were  enlightened  and 
civilized  nations,  but  without  divine  revelation.  There  we 
find  them  grossly  ignorant  of  the  most  vital  and  important 
truths.  Their  gods  were  multiplied  almost  without  number. 
The  sun,  the  moon  and  the  stars;  demons  and  departed 
heroes;  animals,  noxious  insects,  and  even  rivers  were  their 
gods.  Statues  of  gold  and  silver,  blocks  of  wood  and  of 
stone,  the  work  of  their  own  hands,  were  the  objects  of  their 
idolatry;  and  human  sacrifices,  obscenity,  prostitution, 
drunkenness  and  bacchanalian  revels  formed  a  great  part 
of  their  stated  worship. 

They  were  ignorant  of  the  true  account  of  creation — of 
God's  design  in  making  the  world — of  the  origin  of  evil 
and  the  original  dignity  of  human  nature.  Socrates,  Cicero 
and  Seneca,  their  wisest  and  best  men,  doubted  even  the 
immortality  of  the  soul.  Of  the  resurrection  of  the  body 
they  knew  nothing.  When  such  men  were  thus  enshrouded 
in  doubt,  what  must  have  been  the  darkness  of  the  mass  of 
the  common  people  who  on  all  these  points  had  an  equally 
vital  interest? 

A  further  state  of  rewards  and  punishments  was  too  little 
understood  to  have  a  proper  influence  on  the  conduct.  Hence, 
their  morals  were  corrupt  and  corresponded  with  the  moral 

[^9] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

darkness  of  the  mind.  It  could  not  be  otherwise.  Man  is  a 
creature  actuated  by  motives.  But  where  was  the  motive 
for  holiness,  for  purity  of  heart  and  Hfe,  when  holiness  and 
the  worship  of  the  heart  were  not  known?  It  is  remarkable 
also  that  the  most  civilized  and  barbarous  nations  were  nearly 
aUke  in  their  ignorance  of  divine  things  and  in  their  moral 
depravity  of  conduct.  This  picture  of  the  nations  of  an- 
tiquity, drawn  at  large  by  their  own  historians,  will  suit  the 
heathen  nations  of  our  own  time;  and  here,  too,  moral  dark- 
ness and  depravity  bring  to  a  level  the  most  civilized  and  the 
most  barbarous.^ 

An  honest  man  cannot  talk  this  way  without  pre- 
paring himself  for  missionary  duty. 

This  last  question  is  interesting  from  another 
point  of  view.  We  are  told  that  the  early  mis- 
sionary motive  was  purely  eschatological,  that  it 
sprang  from  a  desire  to  rescue  the  heathen  from 
a  future  punishment,  and  that  the  argument  for 
missions  from  the  present  moral  needs  of  the  world 
was  not  recognized,  that  the  decay  of  the  old 
ideas  makes  it  necessary  to  shift  entirely  the  basis 
of  missionary  appeal.  This  theory  rests  upon  an 
ignorance  of  the  character  of  the  missionary  ar- 
gument advanced  at  the  beginning  of  the  mission- 
ary enterprise.  I  find  in  the  writings  of  Lowrie  and 
Evarts  an  almost  exclusive  appeal  to  the  moral  need 
of  the  world.  It  needs  a  spiritual  regeneration  now. 
It  needs  the  establishment  of  Christian  institutions 
now.  The  charge  of  a  narrow  eschatological  appeal 
never  did  hold  against  the  missionary  movement. 
An  adequate  knowledge  of  the  official  statements 
of  the  missionary  organizations  would  lay  them  open, 

'  Lowrie,  "Memoirs  of  the  Honorable  Walter  Lowrie,"  p.  34  f. 

[3°] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

I  think,  rather  to  the  charge  of  error  for  over-moral- 
izing and  over-sociaHzing  the  aim  of  the  missionary 
enterprise;  of  not  emphasizing  enough  those  considera- 
tions of  eternity  which  are  supposed  to  have  been 
their  only  care.  Evarts'  language  is  almost  constantly 
of  the  broadest  sort: 

Where  is  the  man  emulous  of  a  distinction  which  God 
will  approve,  and  panting  after  a  renown  which  shall  never 
mock  the  possessor?  ...  Is  he  called  to  the  high  office 
of  a  Christian  missionary?  ...  He  may  lay  the  foundations 
for  Christian  institutions  that  shall  shed  around  them  a 
heaHng  power,  and  remain  an  expression  of  the  divine  be- 
neficence to  the  end  of  time.^ 

In  the  conclusion  of  his  annual  survey  of  the  work 
in  the  "Annual  Report  of  the  American  Board  for 
1830,"  Evarts  wrote: 

Christians  have  for  twenty  or  thirty  years  past  distinctly 
avowed  the  determination  to  labor  for  the  conversion  of  the 
world.  They  have  professed  a  full  belief  that  the  time  is 
rapidly  approaching  when  all  men  will  be  brought  under  the 
influence  of  the  gospel;  when  nominally  Christian  nations 
will  be  so  reformed  and  purified  that  vice  and  infidelity, 
and  superstition  and  crime,  and  a  merely  secular  profession 
of  religion  will  have  disappeared  and  been  ultimately  ban- 
ished by  the  power  of  divine  truth  operating  kindly  but 
irresistibly  through  the  medium  of  correct  public  opinion, 
pervading  a  truly  virtuous  and  pious  community.  In  ac- 
cordance with  this  beHef  the  friends  of  Christ  have  put  into 
operation  certain  principles  and  causes  which  are  evidently 
adapted  to  change  the  condition  of  mankind;  and  the  effects 
of  these  causes  are  already  becoming  manifest  to  the  world.'^ 

'  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  258. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  388. 

[31] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Again  and  again  Lowrie  and  Evarts  recur  to  the 
mission  of  the  gospel  to  transform  the  present  Kfe 
of  man,  and  appeal  for  support  of  missions  on  the 
ground  of  man's  present  need  of  the  stimulus  and 
restraint  of  Christianity.  In  an  ''Address  to  the 
Christian  Public,"  issued  by  the  American  Board  in 
1812,  Evarts  says: 

It  is  now  generally  seen  and  felt  by  those  who  have  any 
claim  to  be  considered  as  proper  judges  that  Christianity 
is  the  only  remedy  for  the  disorders  and  miseries  of  this 
world,  as  well  as  the  only  foundation  of  hope  for  the  world 
to  come.  No  other  agent  will  ever  control  the  violent  pas- 
sions of  men;  and  without  the  true  religion  all  attempts  to 
meliorate  the  condition  of  mankind  will  prove  as  illusory  as 
a  feverish  dream.  The  genuine  patriot,  therefore,  and  the 
genuine  philanthropist  must  labor,  so  far  as  they  value  the 
prosperity  of  their  country  and  the  happiness  of  the  human 
race,  to  diffuse  the  knowledge  and  the  influence  of  Chris- 
tianity at  home  and  abroad.  Thus  will  they  labor  most 
effectually  to  put  a  final  period  to  oppression  and  slavery, 
to  perfidy  and  war,  and  to  all  the  train  of  evils  which  false- 
hood, ambition  and  cruelty  have  so  profusely  scattered 
through  the  world.^ 

Undoubtedly  missionary  arguments  need  ever  new 
restatement,  but,  after  all,  they  need  less  than  is  usu- 
ally supposed.  The  vocabulary,  of  course,  alters  with 
the  vernacular  of  the  time,  but  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciples abide.  Evarts  proved  this,  and  contended  that 
one  of  the  advantages  of  the  mission  cause  was  that 
its  principles  remained  unchangeable  while  its  agents 
died  and  all  antagonistic  systems  shifted  their  ground 
of  self -justification.     In  his  last  report  he  said: 

•  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  loi. 

[3=] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

When  it  is  considered  that  the  missionary  cause  has  now, 
for  a  long  time,  been  exposed  to  the  scrutiny  of  friends  and 
enemies;  to  the  doubts  of  the  timid,  the  scoffs  of  the  profane 
and  the  sophistries  of  the  skeptical;  and  when  the  soHdity  of 
its  foundation  is  proved  by  every  trial,  there  need  be  no 
apprehension  as  to  its  permanency  and  its  ultimate  triumph. 
All  systems  of  false  doctrine  and  all  codes  of  unsound  moral- 
ity are  subject  to  continual  variations.  They  are  sus- 
tained, so  long  as  sustained  at  all,  by  a  series  of  temporary 
expedients.  The  reasons  assigned  at  one  time,  especially  in 
all  cases  of  practical  error,  are  essentially  different  from 
those  which  had  been  assigned  at  another.  The  inference  is 
inevitable.  But  though  the  principles  upon  which  missions 
to  the  heathen  have  been  urged  are  unchangeable,  the 
agents  and  the  circumstance  are  constantly  experiencing 
that  mutabihty  which  belongs  to  all  terrestrial  objects.^ 

These  were  the  careful,  far-seeing,  undimmed  views 
of  the  strong  men  who  laid  the  foundations  of  our 
American  foreign  missions.  Their  tone  is  not  un- 
naturally a  little  more  moral  and  political  than  that 
of  the  British  founders.  Our  nation  was  then  young 
and  Christianity  was  conceived  of  in  its  institutional 
aspects  as  the  indispensable  source  of  a  happy  society. 
The  personal  evangelistic  element  was  never  forgot- 
ten, but  I  recall,  as  against  much  of  the  cheap  talk 
of  our  day  regarding  the  changed  basis  of  missions, 
the  fact  that  while  the  emphasis  as  compared  with  one 
generation  ago  may  have  changed,  it  is  perhaps  not  so 
social  and  philanthropic  to-day  as  it  was  two  genera- 
tions ago. 

'Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  386. 


[33] 


in 

Walter  Lowrie  took  charge  of  the  foreign  mis- 
sions of  the  Presbyterian  Church  at  the  conclusion  of 
a  long  controversy  involving  the  principles  on  which 
the  American  churches  should  prosecute  their  mis- 
sion work,  whether  by  voluntary  societies  or  officially 
and  organically  as  churches.  The  Baptist  Society 
in  England  had  been  a  denominational  organiza- 
tion, but  it  was,  of  course,  on  the  basis  of  the  inde- 
pendent system  of  the  Baptists  a  voluntary  organi- 
zation within  the  denomination.  Shortly  afterwards 
the  tide  of  missionary  interest  begun  by  Carey  led 
to  the  formation  of  the  London  Missionary  Society, 
which  was  designed  to  be  undenominational,  volun- 
tary, of  course,  and  to  represent  the  interests  of  all 
bodies  which  would  cooperate.  The  A.  B.  C.  F.  M. 
was  formed  by  Congregationalists,  but  on  the  model 
of  the  London  Missionary  Society,  and  with  the  same 
ideal.  It  desired  to  become  the  national  American 
Society  and  to  do  the  foreign  mission  work  of  all 
churches  which  would  work  through  it.  The  accept- 
ance by  Judson  of  immersionist  views  led  to  his 
withdrawal  from  its  force,  and  his  support  denomi- 
nationally by  the  Baptists,  but,  of  course,  in  a  volun- 
tary way  that  church  lacking  any  central  ecclesiasti- 
cal authority.  The  Presbyterian  Church  had  no 
central  representative  agency.  The  Western  Mission- 
ary Society  of  the  Synod  of  Pittsburgh  was  the  most 
advanced   missionary   organization   in   the   Church. 

[34] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

Evarts'  desire  was  to  get  the  General  Assembly  and 
also  the  Dutch  Reformed  Church  to  adopt  the 
American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Mis- 
sions as  their  foreign  missionary  agency.  He  wrought 
tactfully  to  bring  this  about,  but  there  existed  in  the 
Presbyterian  Church  what  in  some  was  doubtless  a 
sectarian  spirit,  in  others  a  fear  of  the  doctrinal  laxity 
of  a  New  England  organization,  but  what  with  many 
was  a  firm  conviction  that  a  great  principle  of  Chris- 
tian poKcy  was  involved.  This  latter  class  thought 
that  the  Presbyterian  Church,  which  was  a  compact 
ecclesiastical  organization,  had  no  right  to  leave 
foreign  missions  to  the  voluntary  interests  of  its 
members  or  to  relegate  the  administration  of  the 
cause  to  an  independent  society,  but  was  in  duty 
bound  as  a  church  to  take  up  the  work  as  a  distinct 
activity  of  the  Church  as  a  whole.  There  were  other 
debated  questions  when  Mr.  Lowrie  accepted  the 
secretaryship.  As  his  son  says  in  his  memoir  of  his 
father: 

Serious  controversies  existed  between  the  old  and  the 
new  school  parts  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  tending  to  the 
separation,  which  afterwards  occurred.  The  cause  of  foreign 
missions  was  not  much  affected  at  first  by  these  dissensions; 
but  for  a  time  it  was  feared  that  great  evils  would  result  from 
extreme  measures.  Mr.  Lowrie  was  in  sympathy  with  the 
views  commonly  taken  of  controverted  questions  in  western 
Pennsylvania,  where  but  little  mere  party  feeling  existed 
on  church  questions,  but  where  the  Western  Foreign  Mis- 
sionary Society  was  awakening  much  interest  in  the  cause  of 
foreign  missions,  in  which  he  felt  the  deepest  concern.  The 
Scriptural  principle  that  the  work  of  missions  at  home  and 
abroad  appertains  to  the  organized  Church,  and  not  chiefly 
nor  incidentally  to  voluntary  societies,  was  recognized  by 

[35] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

the  first  General  Assembly  in  1789,  and  by  synods  and 
presbyteries  long  before  that  time.  This  principle  was  not 
held  by  all  in  later  days;  but  it  is  now  recognized  by  the 
reunited  church,  and  it  is  remarkably  verified  in  the  great 
enlargement  of  its  foreign  missions.^ 

The  principle  was  given  very  clear  and  satisfactor}^ 
expression  in  many  General  Assemblies,  but  espe- 
cially in  the  Assembly  of  1867,  when  the  following 
resolution  was  presented  by  the  standing  committee 
on  foreign  missions  of  the  General  Assembly  and  was 
by  the  Assembly  referred  to  the  Board: 

That  this  Assembly  regards  the  whole  Church  as  a  mis- 
sionary society  whose  main  work  is  to  spread  the  knowledge 
of  salvation;  that  individual  Christians  are  not  merely  to 
enjoy  religion  themselves,  but  to  be  actively  engaged  in 
efforts  to  lead  others  to  Christ;  and  also,  that  this  Assembly 
recognizes  the  right  as  vested  in  presbyteries  to  select  and 
appoint  to  the  foreign  as  well  as  to  the  domestic  missionary 
work  any  and  all  such  of  their  number  as  they  believe  to  be 
fitted  for,  and  to  be  needed  in,  the  foreign  field,  and  that  the 
persons  so  designated  and  called  may  not  refuse  to  obey 
unless  God  by  his  providence  clearly  shows  that  his  will  is 
that  they  remain  at  home,  and  that  until  we  come  up  to 
this  standard  we  cannot  be  satisfied  that  with  entire  sin- 
cerity we  can  ask,  ''Lord,  what  wilt  thou  have  me  to  do?" 

The  principle  for  which,  under  Mr.  Lowrie,  the 
Presbyterian  Church  stood,  has  been  acknowledged 
by  many  churches  and  is  recognized  now  by  almost  all 
as  the  ideal.  The  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  and  the  London 
Missionary  Society  have  both  become  church  socie- 
ties, though  the  polity  of  the  Congregational  churches 
which  they  represent  prevents  their  having  the  same 

1  Lowrie,  "Memoirs  of  the  Honorable  Walter  Lowrie,"  p.  no  f. 

[36] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

formal  representative  character  as  the  Presbyterian, 
Methodist  and  Episcopal  missionary  boards  possess. 
The  right  ideal  triumphed  even  over  such  wisdom  and 
Christian  spirit  as  animated  Evarts. 

The  Board  of  Foreign  Missions  of  the  Presbyterian 
Church,  which  Lowrie  served,  was  formally  organized 
by  the  General  Assembly  of  1837  and  it  took  over 
and  consolidated  the  various  foreign  missions  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church,  the  work  among  the  Indians 
being  then  and  until  recently  regarded  as  foreign. 
It  is  not  essential  here  to  trace  in  any  detail  Walter 
Lowrie's  administration.  When  he  took  charge  of 
the  missions  in  1837  there  were  three  missionaries 
among  the  Indians,  in  India  ten  and  in  Siam  three, 
with  a  view  to  a  future  mission  in  China.  The  an- 
nual income  was  $44,748.  And  there  were  in  1867, 
at  his  death,  seventy  missionaries  in  nineteen  mis- 
sions, and  the  income  was  $218,855. 

Three  classes  of  mission  problems  greatly  concerned 
him,  with  which  the  Board  has  now  almost  nothing 
to  do:  (i)  The  Indian  work  which  was  very  exten- 
sive and  effective  has  now  ceased,  through  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  Indians,  its  absorption  in  the  local 
activities  of  the  churches,  or  the  fact  that  it  has  been 
taken  over  by  the  Board  of  Home  Missions.  The  same 
thing  is  true  of  the  extensive  Indian  work  which  called 
for  a  great  deal  of  Evarts'  time.  (2)  For  years  great 
interest  was  felt  in  work  for  Roman  Catholics  in  Papal 
Europe  especially,  the  political  conditions  of  Europe 
inviting  such  attention.  The  American  Presbyterian 
Church  does  not  at  present  deal  with  this  problem 
except  in  Latin  America.     (3)  Missions  among  Jews 

[37] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

were  maintained,  and  gave  rise  to  the  characteristic 
problems  of  such  missions.  The  Board  has  had  no 
such  missions,  save  to  Jews  in  Persia,  for  many  years. 

Mr.  Lowrie  supported  an  interesting  principle  of 
missionary  administration  in  the  matter  of  raising 
funds  which  differed  from  the  methods  of  Mr.  Evarts, 
the  difference  running  back  into  their  diverse  principles 
regarding  the  relationship  of  the  Church  to  missions. 
Mr.  Evarts  advocated  the  employment  of  agents  to 
represent  the  cause  and  to  solicit  funds.  Such 
agents  were  practically  necessary  to  a  missionary  soci- 
ety. They  may  have  been  necessary  also  at  first 
even  to  a  church  organization.  At  any  rate,  they 
were  maintained  by  the  Presbyterian  Board  until 
1855,  when  they  were  discontinued.  The  expense 
for  salaries  from  1838  to  1855  had  been  fifty  thousand 
dollars,  a  small  sum,  three  thousand  dollars  per 
annum  on  the  average,  but  proportionately  great 
and  it  was  felt  that  the  principle  was  weak.  If  the 
Church  itself  was  a  missionary  society,  then  the  officers 
of  the  Church  were  ipso  facto  missionary  agents. 

Mr.  Lowrie  was  not  an  eager,  enthusiastic  man. 
In  commenting  on  the  New  Testament  writers  he 
remarked  in  his  ''Treatise  on  Divine  Revelation": 

These  witnesses  write  with  impartiality,  sobriety,  mod- 
esty and  every  mark  of  sincerity.  They  relate  their  own 
mistakes  and  record  their  own  follies  and  faults.  There  is 
no  enthusiasm,  no  exclamations  against  others,  no  violence.^ 

His  vindication  of  the  New  Testament  writers  from 
the   charge  of   enthusiasm   is   significant.     It  reads 

•  Lowrie,  "Memoirs  of  the  Honorable  Walter  Lowrie,"  p.  37. 

[38] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

like  that  epitaph  of  a  bishop  of  Hereford  which 
declares  that  he  was  the  consistent  foe  of  all  novel- 
ties and  enthusiasms.  Lowrie  was  himself  grave 
and  sober.  He  did  not  stamp  the  missionary  activi- 
ties with  any  tone  of  exuberance.  I  do  not  think 
that  he  was  a  man  of  the  penetration  or  range  of 
Evarts,  or  of  the  organizing  quahty  and  constructive 
power  of  Henry  Venn.  But  he  was  a  solid,  moving 
man,  a  man  of  discernment  and  of  progressiveness. 
He  expressed  the  best  characteristic  temper  of  his 
church,  lacking  some  things  that  are  desirable,  but 
more,  I  think,  that  are  elsewhere  found  and  that  can 
well  be  spared.  His  addresses  and  writings  show  him 
to  have  been  somewhat  unelastic  and  unimaginative. 
He  states  fact,  but  there  is  little  play  of  fancy,  and 
the  emotion,  which  it  is  said  was  not  absent,  was  of  a 
sober  type.  He  had  a  solemn  and  depressing  and 
yet  not  an  uncharitable  or  undiscriminating  view  of 
the  condition  of  the  heathen  nations,  to  which  he 
gave  careful  and  dehberate  utterance.  He  offered 
good,  sensible  counsel  to  the  missionaries.  Nothing 
short  of  a  perfect  knowledge  of  the  language,  even  of 
Chinese,  would  suffice.  He  saw  many  fundamental 
principles  clearly  and  gave  them  orderly  and  prudent 
utterance.      In  the  report  of  1837  he  wrote: 

The  first  instruction  to  be  given  to  all  missionaries  is  to 
preach  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  To  the  Jew  this  may 
be  a  stumblingblock,  and  to  the  Greek  foolishness,  but  to 
them  which  are  called,  both  Jews  and  Greeks,  Christ  is  the 
power  of  God  and  the  wisdom  of  God.  Let  no  missionary 
society  place  any  other  agency  above  that  of  the  living 
preacher,  lest  they  be  found  wise  above  what  is  written. 

Next  to  the  direct  preaching  of  the  gospel,  the  attention 

[39] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

of  the  missionaries  must  be  strongly  called  to  the  import- 
ance of  rightly  using  all  proper  human  means  for  raising  up 
a  qualified  native  ministry.  On  this  part  of  the  subject  it 
is  believed  that  a  serious  mistake  has  existed,  even  in  the 
minds  of  most  devoted  friends  of  foreign  missions.  The 
agency  of  a  native  ministry  has  been  overlooked,  and  the 
most  pressing  calls  have  been  made  on  the  churches  to 
supply  pastors,  and  to  provide  for  their  support,  for  the 
whole  heathen  world.  But  in  the  experience  of  every  mis- 
sionary society  no  truth  is  more  clearly  indicated  than 
that  the  conversion  of  the  heathen  must  be  effected  princi- 
pally by  ministers  from  the  heathen  themselves.  An  ex- 
perienced missionary,  writing  from  Africa,  says,  "You  may 
as  well  attempt  to  supply  the  people  with  bread  from  Eng- 
land and  the  United  States  as  to  supply  them  with  all  the 
ministers  they  want."  Another,  writing  from  India,  says, 
"Did  a  native  missionary  possess  the  same  knowledge  and 
the  same  grace  as  a  European,  he  would  be  worth  ten  Euro- 
peans. In  knowledge  of  the  language,  in  access  to  the 
natives,  in  capacity  for  enduring  the  heat  of  the  climate,  in 
the  expense  of  his  education  and  support,  and  in  the  prob- 
ability in  the  continuance  of  his  life,  there  is  no  comparison." 
This  view  of  the  subject  is  abundantly  sustained  by  many 
others  most  experienced  in  the  work  of  preaching  the  gospel 
in  person  to  the  heathen.  Such  also  we  find  was  the  prac- 
tice of  the  first  missionaries  when  they  went  out  from  Jeru- 
salem to  make  known  the  gospel  to  all  the  world.  In  follow- 
ing their  example  in  this  and  all  other  matters  no  missionary 
society  need  fear  any  mistake.^ 

He  was  thoroughly  practical.  In  sending  a  mission- 
ary family  to  the  West  Coast  of  Africa  he  sent  a 
house  large  enough  for  two  families,  all  prepared  to 
be  set  up.  He  was  one  of  the  first  to  realize  the 
importance  of  the  mission  press  in  China  and  the 

»  Lowrie,  "Memoirs  of  the  Honorable  Walter  Lowrie,"  p.  121  f. 
[4°] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

value  of  movable  types,  and  though  the  Board  was 
poor  he  led  it  in  1856  to  join  with  King  Louis  Phillipe 
and  the  British  Museum  in  providing  five  thousand 
dollars  each  for  casting  the  first  font  of  movable 
Chinese  type.  He  had  thus  far  but  calm  vision  in 
many  things,  and  he  planned  for  large  developments 
with  a  simple  faith.  He  lacked  all  petty  sectarian 
spirit.  In  sending  missionaries  to  China,  he  told 
them,  "In  the  permanent  location  of  your  mission 
care  must  be  taken  not  to  interfere  with  any  existing 
Protestant  mission. "^  He  laid  the  foundation  of  the 
Library  of  the  Presbyterian  Board,  which  is  one  of 
the  best  missionary  Hbraries  in  the  country,  especially 
rich  in  foreign  volumes  of  his  time.  He  exalted  high 
views  of  missionary  devotion  and  sacrifice.  To  some 
missionaries  going  to  Africa  in  1841  he  said: 

Let  it  be  admitted  that  to  plant  the  Church  in  Africa 
will  cause  the  death  of  some  of  God's  servants.  If  we  take 
the  example  of  the  apostles  for  our  guidance,  we  will  not  find 
in  this  a  sufficient  reason  for  leaving  the  millions  in  this 
country  in  the  unmolested  possession  of  Satan.  ...  In 
no  instance  did  the  fear  of  death  deter  them  from  preaching 
the  glorious  gospel  of  the  Son  of  God.  They  were  influenced 
by  his  Spirit  and  acted  in  view  of  his  high  and  holy  example. 
"Hereby  perceive  we  the  love  of  God,  because  he  laid  down 
his  life  for  us:  and  we  ought  to  lay  down  our  lives  for  the 
brethren."  There  is  a  tendency  in  some  minds  to  draw  an 
inference  against  the  missionary  work  from  the  death  of  a 
missionary,  which  is  not  thought  of  in  the  death  of  a  minister 
among  the  churches  at  home.  But  this  position  will  not  bear 
examination.  Within  a  few  months  how  large  has  been  the 
number  of  beloved  brethren,  most  of  them  in  the  prime  of 
Hfe,  who  have  been  called  home  from  their  labors;  yet  no 

1  Lowrie,  "Memoirs  of  the  Honorable  Walter  Lowrie,"  p.  94. 

[41] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

one  infers  from  these  dispensations  of  divine  Providence 
that  it  is  not  the  duty  of  the  Church  to  use  every  means  to 
supply  their  places.  Nay,  all  agree,  that  for  this  purpose 
increased  efforts  and  increased  prayer  to  the  Lord  of  the 
harvest,  together  with  a  deeper  humility  and  repentance  for 
her  unfaithfulness,  become  the  special  duty  of  the  Church 
in  these  seasons  of  rebuke  and  affliction.  These  principles 
apply  in  all  their  force  to  the  death  of  our  dear  brethren  in 
the  foreign  field;  and  the  Church  is  not  at  Hberty  to  apply 
one  rule  of  duty  in  regard  to  her  ministers  at  home  and  an- 
other rule  to  her  ministers  abroad.  The  Word  of  God  makes 
no  such  distinction;  the  field  for  her  agency  is  the  world. 
Although  there  be  a  risk  to  human  Hfe  in  sending  to  be- 
nighted Africa  the  knowledge  of  the  Saviour,  his  commis- 
sion, the  spirit  that  was  in  him,  and  the  example  of  his 
apostles  require  it  to  be  done.^ 

In  closing,  he  reminded  them  how  "dark  and  waste 
and  dreary"  ''the  moral  desolations''  of  the  people 
were,  and  yet  how  encouraging  the  opportunity,  and 
he  warned  them: 

No  privations  or  sufferings  of  his  followers  can  equal  his 
while  fulfilling  his  divine  mission.  The  trials  you  may  be 
called  to  endure  cannot  be  compared  with  his  in  the  Garden 
of  Gethsemane,  when  his  sweat  was,  as  it  were,  great  drops 
of  blood  falling  down  to  the  ground.  Should  you  even  be 
called  to  an  early  death,  it  will  not  compare  with  his  on  the 
cross,  and  his  contest  there  with  the  powers  of  darkness. 
You  may  indeed  be  called  to  fill  up  that  which  is  behind  of 
the  afflictions  of  Christ  "in  your  flesh"  for  his  body's  sake, 
which  is  the  Church,  but,  even  then,  you  have  his  blessed 
promise  that  he  will  never  leave  you  or  forsake  you.  You 
will  find  it  profitable,  and  so  will  all  his  followers,  to  review 
and  meditate  upon  the  terms  of  discipleship  as  laid  down 
by  our  Lord  himself.     "  The  disciple  is  not  above  his  master, 

•  Lowrie,  "Memoirs  of  the  Honorable  Walter  Lowrie,"  p.  99. 

[42] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

nor  the  servant  above  his  lord.  It  is  enough  for  the  disciple 
that  he  be  as  his  master,  and  the  servant  as  his  lord."  "He 
that  findeth  his  life  shall  lose  it:  and  he  that  loseth  his  life 
for  my  sake  shall  find  it."  "He  that  loveth  father  or  mother 
more  than  me  is  not  worthy  of  me:  and  he  that  loveth  son 
or  daughter  more  than  me  is  not  worthy  of  me.  And  he 
that  taketh  not  his  cross,  and  followeth  after  me  is  not 
worthy  of  me."  "If  any  man  will  come  after  me,  let  him  deny 
himself,  and  take  up  his  cross,  and  follow  me."^ 

Walter  Lowrie  could  speak  thus  because  he  himself 
lived  thus.  He  gave  three  of  his  own  sons  to  the  work, 
one  in  India  and  two,  one  to  die  a  martyr's  death,  in 
China.  In  the  Board's  resolutions  upon  his  death 
in  1868  mention  was  made  of  this  spirit  of  sacrifice 
in  him: 

That  we  record  our  high  estimate  of  the  ability  with 
which  he  managed  the  affairs  of  this  Board;  of  the  inde- 
fatigable industry  with  which  he  guided  its  poHcy  in  times 
of  difficulty;  of  the  humble,  earnest  and  prayerful  confidence 
with  which  he  always  carried  forward  the  work;  of  the  per- 
suasive and  effective  eloquence  with  which  he  urged  the 
claims  of  missions  upon  the  churches;  and  of  the  self-denial 
to  which  he  submitted  in  sacrificing  high  seciilar  position, 
in  consecrating  his  fortune  and  his  Hfe,  and  giving  his  children 
to  be  laborers  in  the  great  work  of  the  world's  evangeliza- 
tion.2 

His  great  service  to  the  cause  lay  in  his  own  charac- 
ter. He  laid  the  cause  upon  the  confidence  of  the 
church  because  the  church  wholly  trusted  him.  I  have 
been  told  by  old  men  that  it  was  a  deHght  to  see  him 
appear   before   the    General   Assembly.     Other   ad- 

'  Lowrie,  "Memoirs  of  the  Honorable  Walter  Lowrie,"  p.  107. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  171. 

[43] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

vocates  appeared  and  the  Assembly  listened  warily, 
knowing  that  with  some  of  them  there  was  need  to  be 
on  guard.  They  did  not  intend  to  deceive,  but  they 
were  wont  to  have  occasionally  some  hidden  end  to 
serve.  But  when  Walter  Lowrie  rose  the  whole 
atmosphere  changed.  Now  all  knew  they  were  Hsten- 
ing  to  a  man  of  transparent  sincerity.  He  had  no 
concealed  opinions  or  purposes.  He  was  a  great 
open  fountain  of  fidelity.  He  flung  over  the  mis- 
sionary organization  of  his  church  the  priceless  benefit 
of  his  spirit,  and  it  rejoices  in  it,  I  think,  to  this  day. 
In  his  address  at  Mr.  Lowrie's  funeral  Dr.  Wil- 
liam M.  Paxton  said: 

The  chief  distinction  of  our  departed  father  was  the  char- 
acter of  his  religion.  It  was  a  religion  of  principle.  He 
acted  from  a  conviciton  of  right  and  duty,  and  at  the  point 
of  his  conscience.  He  was  never  carried  away  by  emotion. 
He  had  the  tenderest  sympathy  for  the  suffering,  and  always 
melted  when  he  spoke  of  the  love  of  Jesus;  but  he  never  suf- 
fered his  emotions  to  sway  his  judgment.  He  was  never 
influenced  by  excitement  or  carried  away  from  his  position 
by  epidemical  impulses.  He  had  a  calm  mind,  a  clear  dis- 
crimination, a  sagacity  that  perceived  the  truth  amidst 
much  mist  and  confusion,  a  judgment  of  men  and  things, 
cautious  indeed,  but  certain  in  its  conclusions  and  therefore 
firm  and  persistent  in  their  maintenance.  It  was  this  that 
made  him  a  man  of  decision  and  will.  His  simple  question 
was,  What  is  truth,  what  is  duty?  And  when  this  was  ascer- 
tained, he  knew  of  no  motives  of  policy  or  expediency  to 
make  him  halt  or  swerve  in  his  course  of  action.  It  was  this 
that  gave  him  power.^ 

And  this  will  give  any  man  power.  Those  who  lead 
or  would  lead  their  fellows  and  who  seek  for  the 

>  Lowrie,  "Memoirs  of  the  Honorable  Walter  Lowrie,"  p.  187  f. 

[44] 


WALTER  LOWRIE 

secrets  of  power  over  men  err  greatly  if  they  think 
that  any  cleverness  of  mind  or  skill  in  organization, 
any  self-confidence  or  self-assertion,  or  any  gift  or 
grace  of  any  sort  whatever  will  bring  them  success. 
They  may  for  a  little  time  appear  to  do  so,  but  in  the 
end  power  is  with  the  truth  and  with  the  truth  alone. 
By  truth-loving,  truth-speaking  and  truth-doing, 
without  a  soldier  and  without  a  gun,  Townsend  Harris 
won  Japan  to  enter  into  treaty  relations  with  the 
outer  world.  By  truth  as  a  Hght  in  his  eyes,  a  law  on 
his  Kps  and  a  girdle  about  his  loins,  Chinese  Gordon 
saved  an  empire,  ruled  a  vast  and  imperial  province, 
and  laid  an  immortal  mastery  upon  the  affections  of 
the  British  race.  By  truth  he  who  was  the  Truth 
wrought  the  true  salvation  and  set  up  the  one  true 
throne.  Not  in  wit  or  cunning,  nor  in  any  human 
might  or  power,  but  in  truth  and  candor  and  the 
sunHt  openness  of  humble  trust  in  God  will  we  who 
seek  them  find,  as  Lowrie  found,  the  springs  of  the 
strength  that  shall  prevail. 


[4S] 


STUDY  TWO 


[47] 


Jeremiah  Evarts 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

AND   THE    EARLY    PROBLEMS    OF   MISSIONS 


The  service  which  Walter  Lowrie  did  for  the  Pres- 
byterian Church  was  done  for  the  Congregational 
Church  through  the  American  Board  by  Jeremiah 
Evarts.  After  Mr.  Evarts'  death  the  Minute  of  the 
Prudential  Committee  said  of  him: 

There  was  in  Mr.  Evarts  an  assembly  of  qualities  and  an 
attention  to  every  duty,  constituting  a  completeness  of  char- 
acter seldom  found.  He  could  originate  or  comprehend  the 
largest  plans,  and  yet  attend  to  the  minutest  details;  he  was 
equally  famihar  with  principles  and  facts;  he  could  devise  or 
execute,  feel  or  reason;  he  could  transact  the  retired  business 
of  an  ofi&ce,  or  manage  his  cause  in  writing  or  debate  before 
the  public;  he  could  meet  worldly  men  or  religious  men; 
could  perform  every  duty  to  the  public  and  every  duty  to  his 
family;  could  be  firm  and  energetic  in  his  purposes  and  yet 
cooperate  harmoniously  with  his  associates;  he  could  be  in- 
tensely and  almost  constantly  occupied  with  business,  and 
yet  be  habitually  spiritually  minded.  Probably  few  men 
have  sustained  through  life  a  more  amiable  or  irreproachable 
character,  or  possessed  the  really  useful  talents  in  a  greater 
variety  or  measure,  or  have  used  them  with  more  benev- 
olence, wisdom  and  industry  for  promoting  the  highest  well- 
being  of  his  fellow  men.  Few  have  been  so  ready  and  ade- 
quate to  every  service  to  which  they  were  called.^ 

•  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,  Esq.,"  p.  426  f. 

[49] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

For  twenty  years  the  churches  of  America  knew  that 
there  were  men  of  this  integrity  in  office  in  the  Ameri- 
can and  Presbyterian  Boards,  and  I  think  that  in 
this  fact  these  Boards  had  their  greatest  asset,  the 
influence  of  which  they  still  in  some  measure  feel. 
It  certainly  has  been  proved  to  be  possible  for  a  man 
to  bequeath  his  spirit  to  a  movement  or  an  institu- 
tion. All  over  the  world  to-day  men  are  living  who 
have  been  long  dead,  their  temper  and  principles 
still  dominating  the  men  who  have  succeeded  them  as 
though  they  themselves  still  walked  among  us.  In 
Lexington,  Virginia,  one  sees  and  feels  General  Lee 
and  Stonewall  Jackson  in  the  two  schools  in  which 
their  memories  are  enshrined  as  truly  as  though  they 
themselves  in  bodily  form  were  moving  about  the 
paths  as  in  bygone  days.  It  ought  to  be  our  aim  to 
repeat  and  advance  upon  our  past.  Missionary  work 
ought  to  commend  itself  to  the  churches  not  only  by 
its  moral  excellence,  but  also  by  the  unblemished 
moral  fidelity  of  those  who  administer  it  at  home  and 
represent  it  abroad. 

Jeremiah  Evarts,  one  of  whose  children  was  the 
famous  lawyer  and  statesman,  WilKam  M.  Evarts, 
was  born  in  Sunderland,  Vermont,  February  3,  1781. 
Like  Lowrie,  he  was  a  pioneer  farmer's  son  and  en- 
joyed as  a  boy  the  hard  and  priceless  discipline  of 
frugality  and  toil.  His  mother  taught  him  to  read 
before  he  was  three,  and  he  read  during  all  his  boy- 
hood, whenever  he  did  not  have  to  work.  After  a 
grave  and  unblemished  youth  he  entered  Yale  in  1798. 
A  classmate  who  visited  him  long  afterwards  in  Boston 
described  him  as  being  the  same  Evarts  as  in  college 

[50] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

days:  "Calm,  cool,  dignified,  of  unbending  integrity, 
with  the  spirit  of  an  acute  jurist,  of  a  statesman,  an 
apostle  and  a  hero;  fearlessly  sustaining  the  truth  to 
the  honor  of  his  country  and  the  good  of  men."  He 
was  one  of  President  D wight's  favorites  "as  a  scholar, 
as  a  Christian  and  as  a  friend."  When  the  senior 
class  was  discussing  once  before  the  president  the 
question,  "Is  dancing  a  useful  employment?"  Evarts 
took  issue  with  the  president,  who  had  justified  it 
"to  any  extent  within  the  bounds  of  decorum  and 
sound  argument,"  and  overpowered  him  with  his 
argument  against  dancing  as  a  source  of  temptation 
and  an  influence  to  frivolity. 

As  his  classmate  said,  what  Evarts  was  as  a  stu- 
dent, he  was  always,  and  incidents  picked  at  random 
from  his  life  illustrate  the  same  quaHties  of  character. 
One  of  his  classmates  said: 

Mr.  Evarts  was  naturally  inclined  to  be  most  accurate 
and  particular  about  everything.  Whenever  he  examined 
a  subject,  he  wished  to  know  all  about  it,  and  to  understand 
it  just  as  it  was.  Whatever  he  undertook  to  do,  he  en- 
deavored to  do  well.  Yet  there  was  nothing  in  him  which 
we  usually  denominate  plodding.  His  perceptions  were 
quick  and  he  grasped  a  subject  with  great  readiness,  but 
without  parade;  and  having  grasped  it,  he  never  relinquished 
his  hold.  He  possessed  also  much  acuteness  of  mind.  It 
was  a  hard  matter,  indeed,  to  impose  upon  him  with  false 
appearances.  I  was  never  acquainted  with  a  man  who  was 
naturally  a  greater  lover  of  truth,  relate  to  what  it  might; 
and  few,  I  believe,  have  been  better  able  to  comprehend  it. 
It  is  difficult  to  say  in  what  department  he  particularly  ex- 
celled. His  mind  was  of  such  a  structure  that  it  made  little 
difference  to  what  branch  of  study  his  attention  was  di- 
rected. ...  It  was  not  until  the  middle  of  his  senior  year 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

that  Mr.  Evarts  became  a  Christian.  Before  this  event, 
however,  his  moral  principles  and  conduct  were  strictly 
correct.  No  one  ever  possessed  greater  natural  integrity, 
or  was  more  punctilious  in  the  discharge  of  what  he  deemed 
to  be  his  duty.  He  was  always  conspicuous  for  his  industry, 
and  his  love  of  order,  punctuaUty  and  method,  in  whatever 
he  undertook.  Few  scholars  had  ever  less  occasion  for  self- 
reproach  on  account  of  time  misspent.  In  his  intercourse 
with  his  companions  he  was  open-hearted,  sincere,  honest. 
He  appeared  to  have  an  instinctive  dislike  for  whatever  was 
morally  wrong,  vain  or  frivolous;  and  he  was  forward  to 
reprove  it,  wherever  discovered.  No  one  in  the  class  was 
allowed  to  administer  reproof  with  equal  freedom,  or  could 
do  it  with  so  little  offense.  Such  was  his  reputation  for 
integrity  and  judiciousness  that  none  seemed  to  question 
his  motives,  or  refused  to  pay  deference  to  his  opinions. 
Some  might  have  thought  that  his  tendency  was  to  be  some- 
what too  censorious,  but  no  one  doubted  the  purity  of  his 
intentions  or  the  benevolence  by  which  he  was  actuated. 
He  was  not  prone  to  consider  any  faults  as  venial;  and  for 
that  reason  he  did  not  admit  as  justifications  many  of  the 
excuses  which  might  be  pleaded  in  self-vindication.  At 
any  rate,  he  was  impartial;  for  he  judged  himself  by  the 
same  rule  that  he  applied  to  others,  and  practiced  favoritism 
to  none.  .  .  .  Notwithstanding  his  natural  gravity  and 
seriousness,  few  men  ever  had  a  stronger  sense  of  the  ridicu- 
lous, or  were  more  easily  provoked  to  a  laugh  by  the  sudden 
presentation  of  a  ludicrous  object.^ 

He  was  not  fond  of  levity,  however.    In  closing 
the  chapter  on  his  college  life  his  biographer  says: 

While  he  was  an  undergraduate  there  was  a  periodical 
meeting  of  the  literati  of  the  college,  to  which  a  select 
number  of  his  class  were  to  be,  for  the  first  time,  ad- 
mitted, and  to  which  he  looked  forward  with  high  an- 
ticipations of  pleasure  and  improvement.  "I  well  remem- 
'  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  15  f. 

[52] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

ber,"  says  a  classmate,  "his  strong  expressions  of  dis- 
appointment and  indignation  when  the  ill-timed  levity  of 
some  of  his  associates  prevented  the  benefit  which  might 
have  been  expected  from  such  society."  Again,  his  mind 
was  always  awake  to  what  passed  around  him,  and  indus- 
triously gathered  materials  for  future  use  from  every  quar- 
ter. His  journals  and  notebooks  are  replete  with  the  fruits 
of  this  activity.  .  .  .  His  habit  of  caUing  himself  to  strict 
account  at  regular  and  short  intervals  is  another  point  that 
deserves  remark.  He  acted  in  the  spirit  of  that  Scripture, 
If  we  would  judge  ourselves,  we  should  not  be  judged.  In 
his  pecuniary  accounts  he  was  equally  strict.  He  never 
avoided  any  expenditures  that  were  proper,  and  always  made 
Hberal  provision  of  conveniences  and  comforts  both  for 
himself  and  his  friends;  but  every  cent  was  rigidly  accounted 
for.  This  was  habitual  from  his  boyhood.  To  secure  more 
perfectly  the  object  of  it  he  adopted  while  in  college  the 
practice  of  a  careful  monthly  examination  of  his  accounts, 
when  every  item  of  expenditure  was  brought  under  review 
and  criticized.  On  leaving  college,  the  whole  expenditures 
of  the  four  years  were  faithfully  reviewed.  The  items  were 
arranged  under  distinct  heads,  with  remarks  upon  each. 
The  habits  thus  cultivated  were  of  inestimable  value  to  him 
afterwards,  especially  in  connection  with  various  reHgious 
charities.* 


As  a  young  man  out  of  college  he  tried  the  discipline 
of  rigidly  ordering  his  days.  On  May  i6,  1804,  he 
wrote  in  his  diary  at  Peacham,  Vermont,  where  he 
was  teaching  school: 

I  have  concluded  that  it  is  best  to  draw  up,  a  plan  for  the 
regulation  of  my  conduct  for  three  months  to  come.  I  wish 
to  be  regulated  by  it  so  far  as  I  shall  find  it  salutary  only .2 

1  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p   28. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  35. 

[53] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Here  follows  a  minute  plan  for  all  the  hours  of  the 
day,  for  the  observance  of  the  Sabbath,  and  so  forth, 
ending  with  a  few  special  cautions.  At  intervals 
later  he  kept  journals  accounting  for  all  his  time. 

It  was  obviously  not  his  object  when  commencing  these 
minute  records  to  continue  them  for  a  long  time.  He  thought 
it  useful,  occasionally,  in  order  to  assure  himself  that  his 
moments  did  not  run  to  waste,  and  to  strengthen  his  habits 
of  activity  and  diligence;  and  these  ends  were  attained  by  the 
watchfulness  necessary  for  such  a  record  for  a  few  weeks  at 
a  time.  As  mere  records  they  would  cost  more  than  they 
were  worth.     He  used  them  as  a  means  of  discipline.^ 

Both  he  and  Lowrie  were  men  who  knew  the  secret 
of  Symond's  words: 

Soul,  rule  thyself.    On  passion,  deed,  desire 

Lay  thou  the  laws  of  thy  deliberate  will. 

Stand  at  thy  chosen  post.  Faith's  sentinel.    Learn  to  endure. 

Thine  the  reward  of  those  who  make  living  right  their  Lord. 

Clad  with  celestial  steel,  these  stand  secure, 

Masters,  not  slaves. 

But  to  our  modern  mind  these  lives  appear  a  Httle 
stem.  There  is  no  trace  of  Hghtness,  of  humor. 
"Mr.  Evarts  felt  a  solemn  responsibihty  for  using  all 
his  faculties  and  time  so  as  to  accompHsh  the  most 
good,"  says  the  memorial  Minute  of  the  Prudential 
Committee.  In  a  paper,  to  which  I  shall  refer,  he 
deals  with  the  qualifications  and  disqualifications  of 
missionaries.  Among  the  former  he  mentions  "an 
amiable  temper:  the  countenance  of  a  missionary 
should  indicate  a  pleasant  and  cheerful  state  of  mind, 
and  should  be  to  him,  wherever  he  goes,  his  letter  of 

>  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  183. 

[54] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

recommendation."^  Among  the  latter  he  speaks 
lastly  of  levity:  ''No  person  can  gain  the  respect  and 
confidence  of  uncivilized  men,  especially  of  our 
Western  Indians,  if  given  to  lightness  of  mind;  and 
the  example  of  levity  is  extremely  unprofitable  to  a 
mission  family."^ 

Did  the  bow  never  unbend?  We  are  told  that  these 
men  were  greatly  beloved  in  their  families  and  they 
had  wide  circles  of  friends.  There  must  have  been 
some  play  in  their  lives.  But  is  there  not  too  much 
in  ours?  Do  we  not  slip  too  easily  into  levity?  Has 
not  consecutive  thought  and  serious  expression  of  it 
become  too  rare,  social  intercourse  having  become 
just  a  Hght-footed,  flippant  gossip  about  persons 
and  places,  with  no  grave  discussion  of  the  deeper 
principles  of  life  and  action?  Might  it  not  be  a  good 
thing  for  many  of  us  to  refuse  to  act  upon  a  few  at 
least  of  the  impulses  of  frivolity  and  carelessness 
which  come  to  us  and  by  which  we  constantly  disrupt 
thoughtful  conversation? 

After  much  consideration  of  his  duty  to  enter  the 
ministry,  Evarts  decided  to  study  law,  partly  because 
his  health  was  such  that  he  thought  he  could  not  do 
the  work  of  a  minister,  partly  because  he  felt  that 
where  rehgion  was  at  such  low  ebb,  where  lawyers 
and  other  men  in  public  Hfe  at  the  time  were  so  openly 
hostile  to  Christianity  as  they  were  in  Vermont,  he 
could  do  more  good  as  a  lawyer  than  as  a  minister. 
In  explaining  his  decision  he  wrote  to  his  friend 
Swan: 

>  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  297. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  298. 

[55] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSION.\RY  LEADERSHIP 

With  respect  to  engaging  in  any  business,  it  has  ever  been 
my  opinion,  at  least  ever  since  my  thoughts  have  been  in  any 
considerable  degree  occupied  by  religion,  that  the  welfare  of 
immortal  souls  ought  to  be  the  ultimate  object  of  every 
Christian's  labors;  and,  consequently,  that  every  Christian 
ought  to  make  it  the  business  not  only  of  his  life,  but  of  every 
day  and  every  hour,  to  be  employed  in  such  a  manner  as  he 
shall  judge  most  conducive  to  the  accomplishment  of  this 
glorious  design.  This  obligation  does  not  lie  upon  a  min- 
ister, or  upon  a  person  qualified  to  be  a  minister,  exclusively, 
but  is  binding  upon  every  humble  laborer,  upon  every 
mother  of  a  family,  in  short,  upon  every  Christian  and  upon 
every  man.^ 

When  he  came  to  begin  his  practice  in  New  Haven, 
however,  he  found  that  the  very  loftiness  and  rigidity 
of  his  principles  interfered  with  his  success.  He  had 
made  himself  unpopular  as  a  member  of  the  Grand 
Jury  for  New  Haven  County  by  taking  conscientiously 
the  oath  of  office  and  prosecuting  some  individuals  for 
violations  of  law  which  had  been  *' uniformly  winked 
at  before,"  and  he  had  not  time  to  live  down  this 
unpopularity  and  make  the  success  he  undoubtedly 
would  have  made  by  his  great  abilities,  when  the 
call  came  to  him  to  take  up  the  work  for  which,  with- 
out his  knowledge,  God  had  been  preparing  him. 
God  had  allowed  his  decision  as  to  his  profession  be- 
cause he  knew  that  the  discipline  Evarts  was  choos- 
ing for  himself  would  fit  him  for  the  work  God  had 
already  chosen  for  him  better  than  any  technical 
theological  courses.  The  technical  theological  course 
is  useful  and  proper,  but  God's  men  never  have 
been  and  are  not  to-day  to  be  ground  out  by  any 

» Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  41. 

[56] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

device  of  uniform  discipline.  It  is  good  for  us  to 
make  room  in  our  schemes  for  the  free  and  surprising 
operations  of  God. 

Evarts  was  admitted  to  the  bar  in  New  Haven  in 
1806.  He  removed  in  1810  to  Charlestown,  Massa- 
chusetts, to  become  the  editor  of  ''The  Panoplist.'^ 
"The  PanopHst"  had  been  established  by  Jedediah 
Morse  in  1805.  It  was  the  organ  of  Congregational 
orthodoxy  as  against  Unitarianism,  widespread  in 
the  Church,  but  not  yet  defined  and  coalesced  and 
separated.  Evarts  had  already  contributed  to  the 
paper  and  was  in  full  sympathy  with  its  purposes. 
He  felt  that  it  was  necessary  to  bring  the  Unitarian 
heresy  to  bay.  It  was  permeating  the  Congregational 
churches  and  bringing  what  he  regarded  as  Christian 
truth  and  piety  into  contempt,  and  yet  it  was  so 
hidden  and  often  unperceived  that  it  could  not  be 
dealt  with.  He  began  by  presenting  the  truth  which  he 
felt  was  imperiled,  then  by  exposing  the  errors  which 
imperiled  it.  He  strove  to  define  the  issue  which 
he  felt  was  vital,  and  as  those  who  held  what  he  deemed 
error  broke  off  and  congregated,  he  strove  to  draw 
evangelical  believers  together  so  that  they  could  act 
"efficiently  in  labors  of  Christian  philanthropy." 
He  had  no  petty  or  destructive  end  in  view.  He 
desired  "The  Panoplist"  and  his  own  life  and  the 
whole  Church  to  tell  for  the  positive  accomplishment 
of  good.     He  wrote: 

If  "The  Panoplist"  has  any  merit,  it  consists  in  the  aid 
which  our  pages  impart  to  the  various  plans  of  Christian 
benevolence  now  in  operation.  The  noblest  aim  to  which  it 
aspires  is  that  of  being  an  auxiliary  in  the  great  cause  which 

[57] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

now  unites  the  hearts  and  hands  of  so  many  active  and  pious 
men  throughout  the  world.  The  American  people,  if  not 
blind  to  their  own  permanent  interests  and  stupidly  ignorant 
of  their  own  advantages,  can  perform  wonders  in  the  accom- 
plishment of  the  grandest  designs  which  ever  claimed  the 
attention  or  employed  the  activity  of  mortals;  designs  of  no 
less  magnitude  than  the  estabhshment  of  schools,  churches 
and  the  regular  ministration  of  divine  ordinances  in  all  the 
destitute  places  of  our  own  country;  the  distribution  of  the 
Bible,  and  the  support  of  missionaries  to  preach  its  doctrines, 
in  every  part  of  the  globe;  the  alleviation  of  human  suffering 
of  every  kind,  wherever  men  are  found — in  a  word,  the  entire 
subjugation  of  the  world  to  Christ,  and,  of  course,  the  eternal 
salvation  of  unnumbered  millions  in  all  future  generations. 
Who  does  not  give  thanks  to  God  for  the  opportunity  to 
exert  even  the  humblest  agency  in  promoting  so  blessed  a 
consummation?  If  all  professed  Christians  were  plainly 
distinguished  by  that  grand  characteristic  of  the  Saviour, 
that  he  went  about  doing  good,  how  soon  would  the  face 
of  the  world  be  changed;  how  glorious  would  be  the  altera- 
tion; how  divine  the  effects!  Every  individual  is  answerable 
to  his  conscience,  and  to  God,  the  Judge  of  all,  if  he  does  not 
contribute  his  full  proportion  toward  bringing  about  so  im- 
mense a  good.  Time  is  rolling  on;  the  active  years  of  those 
now  in  their  prime  are  fast  speeding;  health  is  impaired  in 
ten  thousand  instances,  and  life  is  lost  in  ten  thousand 
more;  opportunities  are  passing  by,  never  to  return;  and  yet 
how  slowly  does  the  good  cause  advance,  compared  with 
the  wishes  of  Christians  and  the  exigencies  of  mankind! 
What  enterprises  must  be  undertaken,  what  labor  per- 
formed, what  perseverance  exhibited,  what  an  amazing  com- 
bination organized,  and  what  extended  operations  carried 
on,  before  the  world  shall  be  evangelized.  Every  year  of 
delay  in  this  work  ought  to  be  a  year  of  deep  regret.  The 
most  noble  of  sciences,  the  science  of  doing  good,  is  too  little 
studied.  If  it  were  better  understood  and  made  the  subject 
of  daily  contemplation,  the  way  would  be  prepared  for  a 
grander  display  of  benevolence  on  a  large  scale  than  the  world 

[58] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

has  ever  yet  seen.  The  ultimate  object  aimed  at  would,  in- 
deed, be  the  same  which  has  been  pursued  by  the  truly  vir- 
tuous in  every  age;  but  a  peculiar  sublimity  would  mark  the 
enterprises  in  which  Christians  of  every  nation  and  every 
language  should  engage  with  enhghtened  minds  and  united 
efforts;  and  a  peculiar  glory  would  crown  these  enterprises. 
The  employment  of  doing  good — of  aiming  directly,  by 
prompt  and  vigorous  action,  to  promote  the  permanent  good 
of  others — should  be  made  a  part  of  the  regular  business 
of  every  Christian.  It  should  be  reduced  to  a  system  and 
have  a  large  share  of  time  and  property  assigned  to  it.  This 
time  and  property  should  be  sacredly  devoted  to  God,  and 
employed  in  the  best  practicable  way;  not  squandered  on 
doubtful  or  useless  projects,  nor  hoarded  up  for  future  occa- 
sions which  may  never  arrive;  but  wisely  apportioned  to 
purposes  of  unquestionable  utility,  of  great  importance  and 
pressing  urgency. 

The  day  will  arrive  when  one  exertion  put  forth  with  a  sin- 
cere desire  to  benefit  the  souls  of  men  will  be  of  more  value 
to  the  person  who  made  it,  and  will  be  more  highly  appre- 
ciated by  the  intelligent  universe,  than  all  the  riches  that 
avarice  ever  desired,  and  all  the  power  for  which  ambition 
ever  toiled. 

This  world,  especially  at  the  present  period,  affords  as 
encouraging  a  place  for  doing  good  as  the  subHmest  imagina- 
tion can  create,  or  the  most  benevolent  heart  desire.^ 

Views  like  these  explain  the  ready  and  eager  interest 
which  he  took  in  the  organization  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M., 
of  which  he  was  one  of  the  founders.  He  was  present 
at  its  organization  in  Bradford,  on  June  27,  18 10,  and 
was  influential  in  procuring  the  unanimous  vote  of 
the  General  Assembly  of  the  EvangeHcal  churches 
of  Massachusetts,  which  met  that  day,  in  favor  of 
its  estabHshment  and  in  arranging  the  plan  of  organi- 

»  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  64  f. 

[59] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

zation.  "'The  Panoplist'  was  from  the  first  the 
medium  through  which  the  Board  addressed  the 
Christian  pubhc.''^  At  the  annual  meeting  of  the 
Board  in  1811  Mr.  Evarts  was  elected  treasurer,  and 
the  next  year,  in  addition,  a  member  of  the  Prudential 
Committee.  He  also  continued  "The  PanopKst." 
In  1 82 1,  however,  finding  it  impossible  to  keep  up 
both  the  paper  and  his  mission  work,  he  gave  up  the 
publication,  and  it  was  discontinued  at  the  close  of 
the  sixteenth  volume. 

For  ten  years  Mr.  Evarts  acted  as  the  first  treasurer 
of  the  Board.  Dr.  Worcester  was  the  first  secretary. 
Evarts  was  far  more  than  a  mere  custodian  of  funds. 
When,  in  181 5,  the  missionaries  encountered  difficul- 
ties in  the  effort  to  settle  in  Bombay,  he  wrote  to 
Dr.  Worcester  as  follows: 

I  am  decided,  however,  as  at  present  advised,  that  even 
the  return  of  our  missionaries  to  this  country  should  not 
prevent  or  impede  our  mission  to  Ceylon.  If  we  are  to  be 
the  instruments  of  doing  anything  worth  mention  for  the 
Church  of  God  and  the  poor  heathen,  we  must  exhibit  some 
of  that  enterprise  which  is  observable  in  the  conduct  of 
worldly  men.^ 

He  made  a  visit  to  the  South  in  the  winter  of  18 17- 
18 18  for  the  benefit  of  his  health,  but  under  com- 
mission as  general  agent  of  the  Board.  He  gathered 
information,  advocated  the  cause  and  visited  the 
Board's  first  mission  to  the  Choctaws.  On  his  way 
home  he  visited  Washington  and  saw  the  President 
and  the  Secretary  of  War  with  reference  to  the  Board's 

1  Tracy,  "  Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  97. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  107. 

[60] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

existing  and  proposed  Indian  missions.  From  the 
beginning  the  American  Board  wisely  perceived  the 
importance  and  value  of  such  visits  to  its  missions, 
not  only  among  the  Indians,  but  also  in  foreign  lands. 
The  Presbyterian  Board,  under  the  leadership  of 
Walter  Lowrie  and  his  son,  who  had  returned  from 
India  on  account  of  health,  and  become  his  father's 
associate,  followed  a  narrow  and  less  wise  policy.  In 
Dr.  John  C.  Lowrie's  ''Memoirs  of  Walter  Lowrie,"^ 
the  view  adverse  to  such  visits  is  stated  unhesitatingly. 
The  work  of  the  American  Board  in  some  of  its  older 
fields  shows  to  this  day  the  influence  of  the  great 
visit  of  Dr.  Anderson  and  Dr.  Thompson  in  1855. 
No  secretary  of  the  Presbyterian  Board  visited  its 
fields  abroad  until  Dr.  Ellinwood  was  allowed  to 
secure  his  own  expenses  and  visit  the  missions  in 
Asia  in  1874.  Since  then  the  Board  has  followed  an 
enlightened  and  advanced  policy,  and  provided  for  a 
visitation  of  some  of  its  missions  by  some  of  its  ofi&cers 
or  members  at  least  once  every  five  years. 

1  Pages  162-164. 


[6,] 


II 

In  182 1  Mr.  Evarts  became  secretary  of  the 
American  Board  to  succeed  Dr.  Worcester,  having 
for  one  year,  until  the  matter  could  be  settled,  filled 
the  ofl&ces  of  both  secretary  and  treasurer.  The 
latter  was  now  otherwise  provided  for.  Mr.  Evarts 
continued  as  secretary  until  his  death  in  183 1.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  draw  any  sharp  lines  between  his 
service  as  treasurer  for  the  first  ten  years  and  his 
service  as  secretary  during  the  last  ten.  The  same 
views  and  the  same  spirit  are  evident  in  each  period 
of  service.  One  of  the  first  problems,  in  a  real  sense 
the  first,  was  the  money  problem — how  to  lead  the 
churches  and  their  members  to  a  readiness  to  provide 
what  was  necessary  for  the  support  and  extension  of 
the  work.  This  was  the  great  practical  need — not 
missionaries,  but  means.  In  the  first  report  he 
prepared  as  secretary  he  wrote: 

It  is  important  to  bear  in  mind  that,  so  far  as  our  own 
country  is  concerned,  there  are  young  men  and  women,  in 
sufficient  numbers  and  of  the  requisite  qualifications,  to 
fill  every  department  of  missionary  labor.  .  .  .  There  are 
in  our  country  young  men  enough  to  carry  forward  the  work 
of  missions  to  an  indefinite  extent;  young  men  of  undoubted 
piety,  qualified  to  rank  high  in  their  several  callings  as  evan- 
gelists, pastors,  founders  of  rising  churches,  translators  of 
the  Bible,  directors  of  the  press,  teachers  of  children  and 
youths,  magistrates  of  colonies  in  their  incipient  state, 
husbandmen,  mechanics  of  every  useful  occupation,  and  sea- 
men of  every  class,   from  the  experienced  navigator,  who 

[62] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

can  guide  his  gallant  ship  in  unknown  waters,  to  the  hardy- 
sailor,  who  is  willing  to  buffet  the  waves  of  every  ocean  and 
run  the  hazard  of  every  climate.  Persons  of  all  these  descrip- 
tions stand  ready,  and  wait  only  for  the  word  from  our 
churches  to  go  forth  into  all  lands  and  proclaim  the  unsearch- 
able riches  of  Christ  to  the  ends  of  the  world. ^ 

This  was  the  way  he  made  the  appeal  to  the  public. 
Within  the  circle  he  wrote  with  pathetic  practicalness 
to  one  of  the  missionaries: 

You  will  be  aware  from  what  I  have  already  written  that 
it  would  be  highly  improper  to  think  of  sending  out  more 
laborers  while  our  present  embarrassments  continue.  We 
cannot  send  them  without  great  expense — we  have  not  the 
money — we  have  not  time  to  select  suitable  persons — and 
our  feeble  powers  must  be  directed  to  save  from  sinking  the 
missions  already  in  existence  and  the  missionaries  already  on 
the  ground.  So  much  writing  as  I  have  been  obliged  to  do 
has  produced  a  weakness  in  my  breast,  which  threatens  at 
least  to  suspend  my  labors.  The  whole  care  of  ''The  Mis- 
sionary Herald,"  with  my  increasing  correspondence  and  a 
thousand  little  concerns  of  all  the  missions,  is  more  than  I 
can  well  bear.  I  rejoice  to  labor  in  this  cause  and  to  wear 
out  in  it.  The  Lord  enables  me  to  apportion  my  attempts 
to  serve  him  that  I  may  be  an  instrument  of  accomphshing 
something  for  his  glory .^ 

There  was  no  adequate  provision  for  clerk  hire  and 
he  expected  soon  to  have  no  regular  help  of  the  kind. 
"Let  us  be  willing,"  he  wrote,  ''to  wear  out  as  fast 
as  duty  requires,  taking  all  prudent  measures  to  pre- 
serve health  and  life." 

In  such  circumstances  it  may  well  be  beheved  that 

'Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  153  f. 
'  Ibid.,  p.  140  f. 

[63] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSfflP 

Mr.  Evarts  thought  carefully  and  sagaciously  about 
the  problems  of  increasing  the  resources  of  the  Board. 
He  was  as  truly  animated  by  the  spirit  of  faith  as 
the  most  extreme  of  our  modern  "Faith  Missions," 
but  he  realized  that  James's  firm  word  was  true,  that 
''faith  apart  from  works  is  dead,"  and  he  wrought 
earnestly  for  that  for  which  he  prayed.  Even  in 
those  days  the  problem  of  how  to  reach  rich  men  was 
distinctly  before  the  minds  of  missionary  workers.  We 
think  of  that  as  largely  a  problem  of  our  own  day,  with 
the  rapid  increase  of  large  fortimes.  But  Mr.  Evarts 
worked  at  it  eighty  years  ago.     In  1818  he  wrote: 

I  have  thought  much  of  a  circular  letter,  not  of  the  com- 
mon sort,  than  which  nothing  can  be  more  inefficient;  but 
one  adapted  to  make  each  individual  addressed  feel  that 
the  appeal  is  made  to  him  particularly,  and  aimed  directly 
and  boldly  at  his  heart.  We  have  conversed  together  about 
a  letter  for  very  rich  men.  This  is  wanted  and  will  do  good. 
We  want  at  least  two  others,  which  I  thought  much  of  while 
at  Georgetown:  one  designed  for  persons  possessed  of  a 
competency,  who  maintain  the  character  of  exemplary 
Christians,  calculated  to  induce  them  to  make  regular, 
unsoHcited  and  punctual  remittances  for  our  objects.  The 
other  should  be  addressed  to  persons  of  whom  less  can  be 
hoped  in  a  systematic  way,  but  who  would  do  something 
handsome  if  the  subject  were  brought  powerfully  to  their 
minds  by  a  concise  abstract  of  facts  and  arguments.^ 

He  presented  the  privilege  of  the  sending  out  of 
missionaries  by  individual  gifts: 

The  man  who  sends  a  missionary  to  Africa  or  Asia,  though 
his  missionary  should  die  on  the  passage,  will  have  it  remem- 
bered to  his  honor,  when  this  world  shall  have  passed  away, 
'  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  ii6  f. 

[64] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

that  he  stretched  out  his  hand  to  raise  his  distant  fellow 
creatures  from  degradation  and  sin;  that  he  made  a  serious 
effort,  at  a  personal  sacrifice,  to  impart  to  the  sufferers  on 
another  continent  the  blessings  which  he  valued  in  his  own 
case;  and  that  he  set  an  example  of  benevolence  and  pubUc 
spirit  which,  if  followed  by  all  who  entertain  similar  hopes, 
would  soon  change  the  condition  of  the  world,  and  fill  it 
with  righteousness  and  peace  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost.^ 

He  wrote  in  182 1  to  Mr.  Bissell,  of  Rochester,  of  a 
plan  which  he  had  often  contemplated: 

It  is  thus:  to  send  out  an  agent  to  call  upon  rich  men  who 
profess  to  be  followers  of  Christ,  and  spend  time  with  one 
after  another  in  succession,  at  their  own  houses,  till  they 
would  cheerfully  take  upon  them  an  engagement  to  pay  a 
handsome  sum  annually  as  long  as  God  shall  give  them 
abiHty.'^ 

While  eager  to  reach  men  of  wealth,  he  recognized 
that  education  was  necessary.  In  1829  he  wrote 
from  Baltimore  that  some  agents  of  the  Board  there 

prepared  the  way  for  another  agent,  though  they  could 
not  succeed  themselves.  They  set  the  mark  so  high  that 
the  rich  men  were  not  prepared  to  reach  it.  They  asked  for 
hundreds,  which  they  could  not  obtain,  though  they  excited 
the  people  so  that  they  would  willingly  have  given  tens.^ 

This  inadequacy  of  men's  gifts  in  response  to  the 
appeal  weighed  on  him.  He  wrote  once  to  his  asso- 
ciates of  a  meeting  in  one  of  the  wealthiest  New  York 
churches : 

» Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  260. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  280. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  322. 

[65] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Those  who  were  present  appeared  gratified;  and  if  I  had 
not  thought  of  the  numerous  disheartening  things  which  I 
have  witnessed  elsewhere  I  should  have  been  altogether 
pleased  with  the  appearance  of  the  people,  and  should  have 
been  full  of  sanguine  hopes  as  to  the  result.  As  it  was,  1 
could  not  help  hoping.  No  objection  was  made — all  were 
interested  and  pleased — none  were  disgusted  or  offended — 
all  were  ready  to  subscribe — and  how  much  do  you  think 
they  did  subscribe?  I  was  told  by  one  who  summed  up  the 
different  papers  that  eighty-nine  dollars  were  entered;  and  I 
observed  that  the  sums  varied  from  ten  dollars  to  fifty  cents. 
I  presume  that  everyone  felt  fully  satisfied  that  he  had  done 
his  duty.     I  know  not  what  to  say,  and  therefore  say  nothing.^ 

But  he  did  not  lose  his  patience  and  scold.  He 
wrote  to  the  Ceylon  missionaries,  advising 

that  in  the  communications  of  missionaries  with  home  they 
should  avoid  the  language  of  direct  reproach,  accusation  or 
crimination  of  professing  Christians  for  their  supineness  in 
the  missionary  warfare.  However  just  the  language  of 
crimination  may  be,  and  however  necessary  that  professed 
Christians  should  be  made  to  feel  their  guilt  in  this  matter,  it 
is  not  best  that  a  formal  accusation  should  be  preferred  by  a 
missionary.  He  may  accomphsh  the  business  of  arousing 
his  countrymen  by  the  language  of  gratitude  for  what  has 
been  done;  the  language  of  encouragement  for  future  exer- 
tions; the  language  of  deep  and  feeling  lamentation  for  the 
desolations  which  surround  him;  by  the  exhibition  of  the 
motives  which  constrain  him  to  labor  for  the  heathen;  and 
by  the  description  of  inviting  fields  of  labor  with  which  he 
is  acquainted.  Let  him  urge  the  claims  of  perishing  millions 
as  claims  which  press  on  the  heart  and  conscience — as  claims 
which  he  cannot  neglect  or  disregard.  Let  him  represent 
all  that  is  done  for  the  heathen,  though  in  itself  a  foundation 
for  gratitude  and  praise  unspeakable,  yet  as  very  little,  when 
compared  with  the  wants  of  the  heathen  world.  Having 
^  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  261. 

[66] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

done  this,  let  him  hope  that  others  will  follow  his  reasonings 
to  their  various  conclusions;  or  that  Christians  will  make  the 
application  to  themselves,^ 

In  a  letter  to  a  friend  associated  in  the  offices  he 
wrote: 

In  regard  to  reasonings  and  motives  presented  to  the 
Christian  pubhc,  there  is  need  of  still  greater  caution.  I 
have  never  felt  the  weight  of  my  employment  so  much,  in 
regard  to  any  one  thing,  as  in  regard  to  this.  Not  to  say 
anything  which  shall  let  down  the  standard  of  missionary 
feehng,  and  of  the  duties  imposed  upon  Christians  by  the 
missionary  cause,  or  which  shall,  by  its  boldness  and  ap- 
parently severe  requisitions,  offend  some  of  the  real  friends 
of  the  cause  is  a  difficult  and  delicate  point.^ 

To  Mr.  Bissell,  a  generous  supporter  of  the  Board, 
he  wrote: 

I  would  caution  you,  however,  against  saying  severe 
things  against  the  rich.  Our  Saviour  knew  the  hearts  of  all 
men;  but  we  are  weak  and  ignorant,  and  may  be  too  much 
influenced  by  the  pressure  of  circumstances,  partial  views 
and  various  passions.  The  principle  of  universal  consecra- 
tion may,  indeed,  be  insisted  upon;  and  the  obligation  to  do  all 
we  can,  and  to  do  it  now.^ 

At  the  same  time,  he  realized  what  the  real  impedi- 
ments to  missionary  giving  were: 

The  great  enemy  of  charitable  exertion  is  expensiveness  of 
living— and  this  threatens  to  destroy  everything  good  in  this 
country.  The  Moravians  could  send  missionaries.  Why? 
Because  the  plainest  style  of  living  satisfied  them,  and  a 

1  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  185  f. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  iQo. 
» Ibid.,  p.  320. 

[67] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

large  part  of  their  scanty  earnings  could  be  spared  for  the 
sake  of  the  gospel.^ 

And  he  advocated  no  spirit  of  truckling  or  of  ob- 
sequiousness. He  deemed  the  solicitation  of  mis- 
sionary contributions  the  offer  of  a  privilege.  He 
himself  always  acted  on  these  principles.  He  made 
his  appeals  to  the  conscience  and  the  judgment  first, 
though  underneath  was  ever  the  deep  appeal  to  the 
noblest  feeling.  He  was  especially  clever  at  effective 
calculations  as  to  work  that  could  be  done  in  missions 
by  the  money  spent  on  war  or  drink,  and  his  reports 
are  full  of  such  ingenious  practical  appeals. 

There  was  need  in  those  days  for  a  wise  and  undis- 
courageable  missionary  agitation.  Principles  which 
are  now  estabhshed  among  Christians,  at  least  in 
theory,  were  not  yet  accepted,  and  Evarts  often 
answered  objections  to  missions  which  are  not  made 
to-day,  such  as  that  they  export  specie  which  cannot 
be  financially  spared  at  home;  that  the  contributions 
are  not  accounted  for;  that  missions  are  too  far  off. 
But  many  of  the  arguments  which  we  meet  to-day  are 
the  same  as  those  he  encountered.  The  human  heart 
is  the  same,  and  selfishness  pleads  the  same  old 
excuses,  and  needs  to  be  met  just  as  Evarts  met  it. 
One  illustration  will  suffice  to  show  his  method : 

There  is  one  objection  to  sending  missionaries  abroad  so 
common  and  so  plausible  at  first  view  that  it  ought  to  be 
mentioned  here.  It  is  this:  That  many  ministers  of  the 
gospel,  more  than  can  at  present  be  supplied,  are  imperiously 
needed  at  home.  This  objection  states  a  melancholy  truth, 
but  proceeds  on  a  mistaken  principle.     If  the  apostles  had 

»  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  191. 

[6S] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

argued  thus  they  never  would  have  quitted  Judea;  the 
Gentiles  would  never  have  heard  the  gospel  till  many  ages 
after  the  Christian  era;  our  ancestors  in  Britain  would  never 
have  been  converted.  The  same  objection  could  have  ap- 
plied, nay,  was  applied,  to  sending  missionaries  from  Con- 
necticut and  Massachusetts  to  our  new  settlements,  when 
the  domestic  missionary  societies  first  began  their  operations. 

But  not  to  dwell  on  this  consideration,  there  is  another 
which  settles  the  debate  at  once,  which  is,  that  the  readiest 
and  most  efiicacious  method  of  promoting  religion  at  home 
is  for  Christians  to  exert  themselves  to  send  it  abroad.  On 
the  most  thorough  examination  this  position  will  be  found 
strictly  and  literally  true.  When  missions  to  the  heathen 
were  first  contemplated  in  England,  the  above  objection 
was  strongly  urged  and  with  as  great  plausibiHty  as  it  can 
ever  be  urged  here.  What  has  been  the  event?  The  number 
of  evangehcal  preachers  and  professors  of  Christianity  has 
been  increasing  in  that  country  in  an  unexampled  manner 
during  the  whole  time  since  the  first  missionaries  sailed  from 
England.  The  increase  of  faithful  preachers  alone  has  more 
than  twentyfold  exceeded  the  whole  number  of  missionaries 
sent  abroad. 

When  it  was  objected  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  of  Massa- 
chusetts, to  the  act  for  incorporating  the  Board  in  whose 
behalf  we  speak,  that  it  was  designed  to  afford  the  means  of 
exporting  religion,  whereas  there  was  none  to  spare  from 
among  ourselves,  it  was  pleasantly  and  truly  replied  that 
religion  was  a  commodity  of  which  the  more  we  exported,  the 
more  we  had  remaining.  However  strange  this  may  appear 
to  some,  it  will  not  seem  strange  to  him  who  considers  the 
import  of  these  words:  "There  is  that  scattereth,  and  yet  in- 
creaseth;  and  there  is  that  withholdeth  more  than  is  meet,  but 
it  tendeth  to  poverty.  ...  He  that  watereth  shall  be  watered 
also  himself."  "it  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive." 
The  Government  of  God  is  a  government  of  benevolence, 
and  is  intended  to  convince  us  that  he  who  does  good  to 
others  is  more  secure  of  receiving  good  himself.^ 

J  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  io6  f. 

[69] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

He  grounded  missions  on  the  fundamental  Christian 
morality : 

Of  all  the  moral  phenomena  in  the  present  eventful  period 
of  the  wodd,  none  is  more  evident  than  that  the  cause  of 
religion  at  home  and  abroad  is  one;  that  the  same  principles 
which  prompt  to  the  Christian  education  of  our  famihes 
and  to  the  instruction  and  warning  of  our  relatives  and 
friends,  naturally  impel  to  evangehcal  efforts  for  the  benefit 
of  every  portion  of  the  human  race;  that  this  tendency  of 
benevolent  principles  does  not  exist  in  theory  merely,  but  is 
seen  in  daily  practice;  and  that  henceforth  the  attempt  to 
separate  living  piety  from  expansive  beneficence  will  be  as 
vain  as  it  is  unscriptural.^ 

Mr.  Evarts  realized,  as  Mr.  Lowrie  had,  that  what 
the  cause  needs  is  a  few  earnest  and  efficient  people 
in  every  church  to  aid  the  pastor  where  he  is  a  man  of 
their  spirit  and  to  supplement  him  when  he  is  not. 
He  perceived  also  the  importance  of  a  regular,  steady 
income,  and  his  experience  with  sporadic  appeals  was 
not  happy.  A  zealous  friend  proposed  a  special 
half-milHon  fund.  At  the  meeting  of  the  Board  in 
1827  a  plan  for  raising  an  extra  subscription  for 
one  hundred  thousand  dollars  was  adopted,  and  a 
quarter  of  the  amount  was  pledged  at  once.  Much  of 
this  was  pledged  annually  for  five  years,  but  con- 
ditioned on  raising  the  full  one  hundred  thousand 
dollars  in  twelve  months.  All  this  sort  of  thing  is 
familiar  practice  now,  but  at  that  time  the  effort  failed. 

Out  of  the  deep  interest  awakened  by  the  plan,  in 
spite  of  its  failure,  Evarts  made  the  following  state- 
ment in  "The  Missionary  Herald": 

>  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  281. 

[70] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

For  several  years  past  the  number  of  individuals  has 
been  increasing  who  have  deeply  felt,  and  strongly  expressed, 
their  sense  of  the  obHgation  resting  upon  our  Christian  com- 
munity to  enter  with  great  energy  into  the  fields  now  open 
for  missionary  labor. 

Such  have  been  the  indications  of  Providence  in  regard  to 
this  subject  that  the  committee  feel  authorized  to  beheve 
that  a  new  era  has  dawned  upon  the  American  churches;  and 
that  the  time  has  arrived  when  such  a  number  of  wealthy  and 
prosperous  disciples  of  Christ  will  come  forward  with  their 
liberal  offerings  unsolicited,  as  shall  attract  the  attention 
and  gain  the  cooperation  of  their  brethren  in  less  affluent 
circumstances;  and  thus,  unless  the  signs  of  the  times  are 
mistaken,  there  will  hereafter  be  no  delay  for  want  of  money 
to  send  into  any  inviting  field  such  well-qualified  laborers  as 
God  shall  furnish  and  endow  with  the  requisite  spirit  and  zeal. 
This  state  of  things  imposes  very  solemn  duties  upon  the 
committee,  both  in  regard  to  selecting  new  stations  and  ap- 
pointing missionaries  and  assistants  to  occupy  them. 

Looking  to  Jesus,  the  author  and  finisher  of  our  faith, 
and  considering  the  peculiar  duties  and  obligations  of  the 
age,  the  committee  feel  prepared  to  say  that  no  man  who 
possesses  suitable  qualifications  to  go  forth  as  a  preacher  of 
the  gospel  to  the  heathen  need  hesitate  a  moment  lest  his 
services  should  be  needed.^ 

How  many  times  since  have  such  utterances  issued 
from  mission  boards,  only  to  be  followed  by  very 
different  strains  in  the  inevitable  ebb  of  the  tide! 

''The  Missionary  Herald,"  which  had  been  estab- 
Hshed  by  the  Board  as  its  organ,  was  a  great  success. 
The  circulation  rose  in  a  few  months  to  fourteen  thou- 
sand copies,  and  Mr.  Evarts  only  refrained  from  push- 
ing it  faster  lest  they  should  encumber  the  mails  and 
"endanger  the  privilege  of  sending  any  by  mail,  as 

'Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  290  f. 

[71] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

postmasters  have  a  large  discretionary  power  on  this 
subject."^ 

The  administration  of  the  Board,  of  course,  did  not 
escape  criticism.  No  administration  does.  No  ad- 
ministration deserves  to.  Evarts  urged  that  such 
criticism  must  be  treated  seriously. 

When  we  hear  any  complaining  or  grumbling  with  respect 
to  the  doings  of  our  Board,  we  are  apt  to  overrate  its 
importance.  I  believe  this  has  been  the  case  invariably 
hitherto.  We  must  not,  however,  conclude,  like  the  king 
of  England,  that  we  can  do  no  wrong.  We  must  not 
be  offended  if  people  suppose  we  have  actually  done  wrong. 
We  must  take  it  for  granted  that  some  will  judge  with 
very  scanty  means  of  information;  and,  although  some  may 
hastily  blame  us,  others  may  blindly  applaud  our  doings. 
Our  only  security  is  in  the  divine  teaching,  and  this  is 
not  to  be  expected  without  asking  for  it,  nor  without  using 
other  means  of  obtaining  it.  We  must  dehberate  well  before 
we  act,  and  look  carefully  on  every  side  of  a  subject;  and  when 
we  have  done  so,  we  must  proceed  boldly,  not  hesitatingly 
and  tremblingly,  in  what  we  conceive  to  be  the  right  course. 
When  we  pubHsh,  we  must  see  to  it  that  our  reasons  are  in 
themselves  good,  and  that  we  make  them  inteUigible.  We 
must  avoid  giving  lame  accounts  which  will  need  subsequent 
propping  and  bolstering.^ 

There  were  some  types  of  critics,  however,  such  as 
many  we  meet  with  still,  with  which  he  dealt  as 
Samuel  dealt  with  Agag.  With  hearty  zeal  he  hewed 
them  to  pieces  before  the  Lord,  and  where  they  were 
responsible  to  any  authority,  he  took  up  the  matter 
with   relentless  purpose   to   see   justice.     One   case 

1  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  i6i. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  225. 

[72] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

involving  such  action  on  Evarts'  part  arose  in  con- 
nection with  the  Sandwich  Islands  mission. 

There  were  circumstances  connected  with  that  mission 
that  tried  his  feelings  exceedingly,  and  occasioned  much 
anxious  thought  and  labor  for  many  months.  While  the 
mission  was  exceedingly  prosperous  in  its  efforts  to  elevate 
and  purify  the  native  character,  and  had  secured  the  con- 
fidence of  chiefs  and  people,  an  outbreak  of  lust  and  passion 
among  unprincipled  foreigners  kept  them,  in  1826,  in  the 
most  trying  circumstances  for  the  period  of  ten  months. 
The  persecution  originated  entirely  from  hostihty  to  the 
purifying  influences  of  the  gospel;  and  was  so  abominable 
in  its  character,  so  trying  to  the  missionaries,  such  an  ob- 
trusion of  the  worst  vices  of  civilized  life  upon  a  people  just 
waking  to  a  love  of  truth  and  purity,  and,  in  view  of  the 
official  position  of  some  of  the  actors,  so  dishonorable  to  our 
country's  name,  as  to  excite,  wherever  the  facts  were  even 
partially  known,  feelings  of  the  liveliest  sympathy  for  the 
heroic  missionaries  and  the  outraged  natives,  and  unutter- 
able indignation  at  the  conduct  of  men  who  were  bound  by 
their  official  station,  as  well  as  by  all  the  ties  of  humanity 
of  a  common  country  and  of  religion,  to  place  themselves  in 
the  attitude  of  benefactors  and  friends.  On  no  subject, 
Mr.  Evarts  remarked,  did  he  find  it  so  difficult  to  control 
his  feelings.  "But  let  us  cultivate,"  he  added,  "the  meek- 
ness of  Christianity;  it  may  be  well  to  publish  a  full  dis- 
closure, but  not  till  after  we  have  deliberated  coolly." 

Most  prominent  among  the  officers  was  Lieutenant  John 
Percival,  of  the  United  States  Navy,  who  visited  the  Islands 
in  command  of  the  armed  schooner  "Dolphin,"  in  January, 
1826.  As  this  was  the  first  public  vessel  from  their  native 
land,  the  missionaries  had  a  right  to  expect  civil  treatment, 
at  least,  if  not  kind  offices,  from  all  on  board.  But  in  this 
reasonable  expectation  they  were  lamentably  disappointed. 
Lieutenant  Percival  at  once  assumed  an  attitude  exceedingly 
hostile  to  the  objects  of  the  mission,  and  the  whole  influence 

[73] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

of  his  visit  was  destructive  of  the  interests  of  religion  and 
morality.  A  law  had  been  enacted  by  the  chiefs  forbidding 
females  to  go  on  board  foreign  vessels,  as  had  been  customary, 
for  the  purposes  of  prostitution.  Percival  demanded  the 
repeal  of  this  law,  and  by  the  most  outrageous  and  infamous 
means  at  length  succeeded  in  breaking  up  its  salutary 
restraints. 

After  Mr.  Evarts  and  his  associates  had  deliberated  coolly 
upon  these  transactions,  it  was  resolved  to  make  a  formal 
complaint  against  Percival  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy; 
and  in  consequence  of  their  representations  a  court  of 
inquiry  was  ordered.^ 

The  result  of  this  investigation  and  the  decision  of 
the  President  were  never  made  public,  but  *'the  next 
year  the  United  States  ship  'Vincennes'  was  sent  to 
the  Islands  to  repair  the  mischief  that  had  been 
done."  She  was  "under  the  command  of  Captain 
WilHam  Bolton  Finch,  with  Rev.  C.  S.  Stewart, 
lately  missionary  at  the  Islands,  and  well  known  and 
esteemed  by  the  chiefs,  as  chaplain,  and  bearing  pres- 
ents from  the  government,  and  all  desirable  official 
assurances  of  S3anpathy  and  countenance  in  every 
effort  to  promote  civilization,  good  morals  and  re- 
hgion  among  the  people."^ 

It  is  doubtful  whether,  if  the  tables  had  been 
reversed,  such  amends  as  this  would  have  been  deemed 
adequate  on  the  part  of  the  American  Government. 

In  1827  a  book  appeared  in  London  relating  to  the 
Sandwich  Islands.^    It  was  a  bookseller's  speculation, 

1  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  278  f. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  309  and  footnote. 

3  "Voyage  of  his  Majesty's  Ship  'Blonde' to  the  Sandwich  Islands  in 
the  years  1824-5.  Captain  the  Right  Honorable  Lord  Byron,  commander; 
London,  1826." 

[74] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

prepared  by  another  and  unfriendly  hand,  from  certain 
papers  obtained  from  the  chaplain  of  the  ''Blonde."  ^ 
A  review  of  it  was  pubhshed  in  "The  London 
Quarterly,"  grossly  slandering  the  missionaries.  Mr. 
Evarts  tore  this  slander  to  ribbons  in  an  article  in 
"The  North  American  Review." 

I  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  291,  footnote. 


[75] 


Ill 

The  Percival  case  was  only  one  occasion  when 
Mr.  Evarts  had  dealings  with  the  government.  He 
was  especially  involved  in  such  political  relations  on 
behalf  of  the  Indians,  particularly  of  the  Cherokees. 
On  their  behalf  he  frequently  visited  Washington, 
seeing  the  President  or  the  Secretary  of  War  and 
striving  to  influence  senators  and  representatives. 
He  was  the  foremost  man  in  the  country  in  molding 
public  sentiment  in  behalf  of  the  Indians  against  the 
unjust  course  of  the  State  of  Georgia.  He  issued  in 
their  support  a  series  of  letters  over  the  signature  of 
William  Penn,  which  Chief-Justice  Marshall  of  the 
Supreme  Court  pronounced  the  ''most  conclusive 
argument  that  he  had  ever  read  on  any  subject  what- 
ever.'^  It  is  insisted  by  some  authorities  that  mission- 
ary agencies  should  not  intermeddle  in  such  questions. 
Undoubtedly  the  presumption  is  against  their  doing 
so;  but  surely  they  would  forfeit  their  claim  to  the 
divine  approval  if,  possessing  the  knowledge  that 
might  enable  them  to  undo  wrong  or  prevent  injus- 
tice, they  should  keep  silence  and  so  connive  at  evil. 
There  are  no  regulations  which  define  for  them  their 
duty  in  such  matters.  It  is  simply  their  duty  to  do 
what  is  morally  right. 

Of  course  in  such  cases  all  depends  on  the  recti- 
tude of  the  moral  judgment.  In  this  sphere,  Dr. 
Leonard  Woods  said  of  Evarts  that  he  ''showed  as 

[76] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

Kttle  liability  to  mistake  as  can  be  expected  of  any 
man  in  this  state  of  imperfection." 

The  character  of  his  judgment  is  shown  in  the 
following  illustrations.  Of  the  aim  of  the  Board,  he 
wrote : 

The  object  of  the  Board  is  one — the  promulgation  of 
Christianity  among  the  heathen.  The  means  by  which  this 
object  is  designed  to  be  effected  are  of  two  kinds:  the  pubhca- 
tion  and  distribution  of  the  Scriptures  in  the  different  lan- 
guages; and  the  support  of  faithful  missionaries  to  explain, 
exemplify  and  impress  on  the  mind  the  great  truths  which 
the  Scriptures  contain.^ 

Here,  as  throughout,  he  did  not  perceive  as  Dr. 
Anderson,  coming  after  him  and  dealing  with  a  more 
advanced  stage  of  the  work,  perceived  the  great  lines 
of  principle  regarding  the  native  church.  He  had  no 
thought  of  Duff's  idea  of  educational  missions  which 
that  great  missionary  exalted  above  one  of  Evarts^ 
means.  Of  the  general  method  and  character  of  a 
mission,  he  wrote  to  Rev.  Cephas  Washburn: 

Missions  to  the  heathen  are  established  with  a  view  to  the 
salvation  of  perishing  souls.  The  object  is  altogether 
religious,  and  should  be  held  continually  in  view.  Piety 
should  be  cultivated  in  all  the  members  of  a  mission  family, 
and  by  all  the  means  which  are  conducive  to  that  end.  Still 
it  is  evident  that  much  labor  of  the  hands  and  much  care  and 
reflection  must  be  applied  to  secular  things  in  order  that  any 
mission  may  be  prosperous;  and  especially  is  this  the  case 
with  missions  where  boarding  schools  are  maintained.  This 
secular  labor  must  be  undertaken  and  performed  from 
religious  motives;  and  being  thus  performed,  it  should  pro- 
ceed with  as  much  alacrity,  vigor  and  perseverance  as  are 
exercised  by  prudent  men  in  any  worldly  pursuit. 

» Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  103. 

[77] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

As  missions  are  supported  at  great  expense,  economy  in 
the  use  of  money,  time  and  labor  is  of  very  great  importance. 
This  should  be  esteemed  an  indispensable  duty,  whether  the 
circumstances  and  wishes  of  donors,  the  obligations  of  the 
Board  to  the  Christian  community  or  the  wants  of  the 
heathen  are  considered.  .  .  . 

The  more  I  become  acquainted  with  missionary  concerns, 
the  more  deeply  impressed  my  mind  becomes  with  the  truth 
that  there  must  be  self-denial,  there  must  be  arduous  labor, 
there  must  be  watchful  care,  there  must  be  unremitting  dili- 
gence, in  order  to  the  successful  prosecution  of  the  missionary 
work.  It  is  not  an  easy  matter  to  raise  up  the  ignorant  to 
knowledge  and  virtue,  to  reclaim  the  wicked  and  to  minister 
in  bringing  to  Hfe  and  holiness  those  who  were  dead  in  tres- 
passes and  sins.  This  labor  will  beget  fatigue  and  sometimes 
sickness;  all  of  which  is  to  be  meekly  and  quietly  received  as 
part  of  the  dealings  of  a  wise  and  holy  Providence. 

These  early  days  were  times  of  keen  self-denial 
and  hardship  both  at  home  and  abroad. 

He  had  a  clear  vision  of  the  importance  of  the 
exact  financial  training  of  native  Christians.  He 
wrote  to  a  missionary: 

Your  terms  with  Mr. are  very  reasonable  and  the 

expense  trifling.  I  would  advise  you  to  adhere  exactly  to 
these  terms  and  not  contribute  any  other  than  the  stipu- 
lated articles.  My  principal  reason  is,  that  all  uncivilized 
people  need  to  be  taught  by  example  the  benefit  of  an  exact 
execution  of  contracts;  and  it  is  quite  injurious  to  them  to 
give  a  great  deal  more  than  you  promise  to  do.  It  tends  to 
make  them  dissatisfied,  even  when  they  are  generously  dealt 
with,  and  leads  them  to  think  that  all  are  indebted  to  them, 
while  they  are  indebted  to  nobody.^ 

Such  principles  would  hasten  self-support  and  pre- 

» Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  245. 

[78] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

vent  much  weak  dependence.     Evarts  knew  of  no 
easy  prescriptions  for  missionary  efficiency. 

The  Lord  must  build  the  house,  or  it  will  never  be  built. 
But  how  will  he  build  it?  In  my  opinion,  he  will  build 
it  by  an  improved  character,  a  more  holy  and  self-denying 
service  in  those  whom  he  employs  in  every  department  of  the 
work.^ 

He  realized  that  the  piety  of  the  home  church  must 
be  raised  if  the  piety  of  the  missions  was  to  be  ex- 
alted. The  stream  which  goes  out  is  the  best  of  the 
church,  but  it  cannot  be  better  than  that.  He 
urged : 

It  should  be  more  generally  felt  than  it  seems  to  be  at 
present  that  great  advances  in  personal  hoHness  are  indis- 
pensable to  a  rapid  and  successful  prosecution  of  the  mis- 
sionary work.  This  is  a  matter  of  vital  importance.  If 
it  is  overlooked,  all  the  machinery  of  missions,  schools  and 
presses  will  be  a  cumbersome  apparatus — a  laborious,  ex- 
hausting, useless  parade.  It  is  believed,  indeed,  that  true 
piety  at  home  and  abroad  is  extremely  desirable.  After 
all  proper  allowances  on  account  of  the  reverence  which  we 
justly  feel  for  the  memory  of  saints  in  ages  that  are  past, 
where  can  we  now  find  such  men  as  Baxter  and  Doddridge, 
Edwards  and  Brainerd?  Or,  if  we  can  fix  upon  an  indi- 
vidual, here  and  there,  who  bears  a  pleasing  resemblance 
to  these  illustrious  champions  of  the  cross,  how  rare  are  the 
instances.  But  the  exigencies  of  the  times  demand  many, 
very  many  individuals,  who,  in  purity  of  doctrine,  holiness 
of  life,  compass  of  thought,  enlargement  of  views,  capacity 
of  labor,  intenseness  of  desire,  fervor  of  zeal  and  assurance 
of  triumph,  shall  make  a  visible  and  near  approach  to  the 
great  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles.  The  friends  of  missions,  the 
conductors  of  missions  and  the  beloved  missionaries  them- 

1  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  203. 

[79] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

selves  need  fresh  anointings  from  on  high.  O  that  it  would 
please  the  God  of  all  consolation  and  hope  to  inspire  his 
servants  with  a  pure  devotion,  accompanied  by  spiritual 
influences  shed  abroad  upon  others;  and  thus  give  the  most 
joyful  evidence  that  the  coming  of  the  Lord  to  reign  over  the 
nations  is  near,  even  at  the  door.^ 

High  Christian  character,  the  spirit  of  a  true  and 
humble  love,  in  a  word,  the  practice  of  the  gospel, 
Evarts  felt  to  be  the  essential  condition  of  missionary 
prosperity.  I  once  asked  Dr.  Guido  Verbeck,  of 
Japan,  for  an  extended  statement  of  his  views  on  the 
subject  of  missionary  poHcy.  After  some  days  of 
deHberation  he  sent  this  brief  paper: 

THE   SCIENCE   OF   MISSIONS 

The  science  of  missions  is  (should  be)  based  upon  the 
Holy  Scriptures,  church  history,  mission  practice  and 
human  nature  (?). 

MISSIONARY  CODE 

(Based  upon  the  Science  of  Missions.) 

1.  A  mission  in  the  foreign  field  should  be,  as  nearly  as 
possible,  a  homogeneous  body,  and  should,  in  all  matters  of 
missionary  policy  and  methods,  as  well  as  of  doctrine,  act 
as  one  body  and  in  perfect  harmony. 

("United  we  stand,  divided  we  fall."  "Eendracht  maakt 
macht."  "Every  kingdom  divided  against  itself  is  brought 
to  desolation;  and  every  city  or  house  divided  against  itself 
shall  not  stand."  Numerous  and  calamitous  difficulties  have 
arisen  between  the  native  church  and  missions  solely  on 
account  of  a  want  of  unanimity  in  some  or  another  of  the 
missions.) 

2.  In  order  to  this  end,  the  home  boards  should  ascertain 
of  every  applicant  or  candidate  for  the  foreign  field,  whether 
he  is  disposed  at  all  times  to  submit  to  a  majority  of  the 

1  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  284  f. 

[80] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

mission  to  which  he  is  to  be  sent,  on  all  questions  of  mission 
policy,  methods  and  work,  and  whether  he  is  resolved  to 
teach  and  preach  nothing  at  variance  or  in  conflict  with  the 
standards  of  the  church  which  commissions  him. 

3.  All  matters  that  cannot  be  satisfactorily  arranged  or 
settled  by  the  mission  in  the  field  shall  be  referred  and  sub- 
mitted to  the  home  board  for  its  assent  or  decision. 

4.  In  all  cases  where  a  missionary  shall  feel  himself  wronged 
or  aggrieved  by  the  action  or  decision  of  his  mission,  he  shall 
have  the  right  of  appealing,  with  the  knowledge  of  his  mis- 
sion, to  the  home  board  in  reference  to  the  matter  in  question, 

Mr.  Evarts  saw  the  same  truth.  Writing  of  un- 
satisfactory conditions  in  some  missions,  he  said: 

The  Prudential  Committee  are  appealed  to  most  particu- 
larly for  a  remedy.  Now  if  the  committee  were  much  wiser 
than  they  are,  how  could  they  apply  a  remedy  to  such  a  case 
as  this,  when  it  is  confessed  that  the  parties  live  in  habitual 
disregard  of  some  of  the  plainest  commands  of  the  New 
Testament,  such  as  those  which  require  them  to  love  one 
another,  and  to  be  of  the  same  mind  and  of  the  same  judg- 
ment; and  when,  as  is  too  apparent,  each  one  seeks  his  own 
good,  and  few  of  them  the  things  which  are  Jesus  Christ's? 
I  do  not  apply  these  questions  to  any  but  those  who  have 
made  the  most  ample  confessions.  The  New  Testament  is 
the  grand  directory,  and  where  that  fails  of  regulating  the 
lives  of  missionaries,  what  can  be  done?  ^ 

These  judgments  and  his  eagerness  for  practical, 
well-ordered,  continuous  work  found  frequent  ex- 
pression in  his  counsel  to  missionaries,  new  and  old: 

Missionaries  should  endeavor  to  make  some  progress  every 
day  in  their  great  work.  They  are  apt — and  we  are  all  apt — 
to  spend  the  present  in  preparation,  thinking  that  in  future 
much  time  may  be  spent  in  action.     But  if  there  is  a  regular 

1  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  264  f. 

[81] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

progress — if  something  is  done  every  day — though  the  ad- 
vance may  not  be  perceptible  at  once,  the  effect  will  at  last 
be  considerable.^ 

All  the  brethren  and  sisters  will  do  well,  I  think,  to  read 
the  New  Testament,  making  personal  application  to  them- 
selves, as  connected  with  a  mission,  of  all  the  passages  which 
relate  to  Christian  intercourse,  Christian  sympathy  and  the 
bad  effects  of  evil  surmisings.^ 

Lay  out  no  new  business  unless  the  state  of  the  mission  im- 
periously demand  it.  In  transacting  old  business  or  follow- 
ing up  an  old  plan  act  as  steadily  as  possible,  so  that  some 
advances  may  be  made  every  day.  When  disappointments 
occur,  receive  them  mildly  and  patiently,  and  limit  the  evil 
of  them  as  much  as  possible.^ 

It  is  much  easier  to  expect  to  be  laborious  and  to  resolve 
to  be  so  than  to  hold  out  in  a  laborious  public  service  for  a 
long  succession  of  years.  Most  men  are  induced  to  labor 
only  by  the  pressure  of  necessity,  or  the  strong  impulse  of 
avarice  or  ambition;  and  it  is  not  every  true  Christian,  nor 
every  missionary,  who  has  benevolence  enough  to  carry  him 
through  a  life  of  unremitted  exertions  made  solely  for  the 
benefit  of  others.  The  virtues  of  diligence  and  industry  are 
to  be  cultivated,  therefore,  and  cherished  as  Christian 
graces.  They  are  not  to  be  obtained  without  an  effort. 
They  cannot  be  formed  into  a  habit  except  by  great  resolu- 
tion and  perseverance,  and,  unless  formed  into  a  habit,  labor 
will  always  be  irksome.  .  .  . 

Let  it  be  urged  upon  you  then,  my  dear  friends,  to  make 
your  calculation  for  obtaining  the  greater  part  of  your  en- 
joyment as  you  are  passing  through  the  world  from  strenuous 
labor.  After  taking  suitable  care  of  your  health,  let  labor 
be  sought  as  regularly  as  your  daily  food,  till  it  becomes  as 
easy  and  natural  to  be  engaged  in  some  useful  pursuit  as 
it  is  to  breathe. 

From  the  very  commencement  of   your    missionary  life 

»  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  244. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  217  f. 
'  Ibid.,  p.  249. 

[8.] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

cultivate  a  spirit  of  enterprise.  Without  such  a  spirit  noth- 
ing great  will  be  achieved  in  any  human  pursuit.  And  this 
is  an  age  of  enterprise,  to  a  remarkable  and  unprecedented 
extent.  In  manufactures,  in  the  mechanic  arts,  in  agricul- 
ture, in  education,  in  the  science  of  government,  men  are 
awake  and  active;  their  minds  are  all  on  the  alert;  their  in- 
genuity is  taxed;  and  they  are  making  improvements  with 
the  greatest  zeal.  Shall  not  the  same  enterprise  be  seen  in 
moral  and  religious  things?  Shall  not  missionaries  espe- 
cially aim  at  making  discoveries  and  improvements  in  the 
noblest  of  all  practical  sciences — that  of  applying  the  means 
which  God  has  provided  for  the  moral  renovation  of  the 
world?  There  are  many  problems  yet  to  be  solved  before 
it  can  be  said  that  the  best  mode  of  administering  missionary 
concerns  has  been  discovered.  What  degree  of  expense  shall 
be  incurred  in  the  support  of  missionary  families,  so  as  to 
secure  the  greatest  possible  efficiency,  with  a  given  amount 
of  money;  how  to  dispose  of  the  children  of  missionaries  in  a 
manner  most  grateful  to  their  parents  and  most  creditable 
to  the  cause;  in  what  proportion  to  spend  money  and  time 
upon  the  education  of  the  heathen  as  a  distinct  thing  from 
preaching  the  gospel;  how  far  the  press  should  be  employed; 
by  what  means  the  attention  of  the  heathen  can  be  best 
gained  at  the  beginning;  how  their  wayward  practices  and 
habits  can  be  best  restrained  and  corrected;  how  the  inter- 
course between  missionaries  and  the  Christian  world  can  be 
conducted  in  the  best  manner,  so  as  to  secure  the  highest 
responsibility  and  the  most  entire  confidence;  and  how  the 
suitable  proportion  between  ministers  of  the  gospel  retained 
at  home  and  missionaries  sent  abroad  is  to  be  fixed  in  prac- 
tice as  w^ell  as  in  principle — all  these  things  present  questions 
yet  to  be  solved. 

There  is  room  for  boundless  enterprise,  therefore,  in  the 
great  missionary  field,  which  is  the  world;  and  blessed  will  be 
the  name  of  that  man  by  whose  perspicacious  diligence  new 
and  effectual  measures  for  bringing  the  gospel  to  the  minds 
and  hearts  of  the  heathen  shall  have  been  discovered.^ 
*  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  407  f. 

[83] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Holding  such  views,  it  is  obvious  what  kind  of 
missionaries  he  felt  to  be  needed.  He  wanted  to  be 
sure  of  the  men,  too.     In  1826  he  wrote: 

Our  Committee  are  so  fully  convinced  of  the  importance 
of  such  an  acquaintance  as  you  mention  that  we  now  send  for 
the  candidates  for  missionary  employment,  that  they  may 
spend  some  time  in  Boston  for  that  special  purpose.  There 
is  a  young  man  at  the  Rooms  now,  who  may  probably  be- 
come a  schoolmaster  in  the  Choctaw  nation,  and  I  expect 
others  for  other  missions  in  a  few  weeks.^ 

He  realized  that,  even  with  all  care,  mistakes  would 
be  made: 

It  is  a  solemn  and  awful  truth  that  there  never  has  been  a 
single  mission,  consisting  of  any  considerable  number  of  in- 
dividuals, in  which  some  of  the  members  have  not  altogether 
deceived  themselves,  and  disappointed  the  ■  hopes  of  their 
friends.  I  mean,  I  have  never  heard  of  such  a  mission,  if  the 
history  was  minutely  known.  If  there  is  any  exception  it  is 
among  the  Moravians.  Let  these  facts  be  pondered  by  every 
man  who  thinks  of  offering  himself  or  of  recommending 
another.2 


Change  of  place  often  affected  men: 

No  man  can  tell  how  great  a  change  it  makes  when  the 
pressure  of  civil  society,  and  especially  of  Christian  society, 
is  taken  off.  It  is  absolutely  impossible  for  an  applicant  to 
know  the  real  trials  of  missionary  life.  What  then  shall 
be  done  to  ascertain  whether  he  can  bear  those  trials?  He 
must  have  been  put  to  some  trials  here.  His  character  must, 
as  far  as  possible,  be  a  tried  character.^ 

'  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  248. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  142. 
» Ibid.,  p.  142. 

[84] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

As  to  the  kind  of  men  wanted  in  missions,  he 
greeted  with  approval  a  long  statement  prepared  at 
"a  missionary  meeting  in  the  western  wilderness," 
but  he  himself  reduced  the  requirements  for  the 
service  to  a  less  formidable  list: 

After  piety,  missionary  qualifications  stand  in  the  follow- 
ing order:  good  temper,  commonly  called  good  nature — a 
habit  of  disinterestedness,  or  attention  to  the  wants  of  others 
— cheerfulness — perseverance — energy.  They  are  all  neces- 
sary to  a  well-qualified  missionary;  the  first  two  are  indispen- 
sable to  the  comfort  of  mission  families.  No  man  knows  the 
importance  of  good  temper — I  have  it  from  experienced 
judges — who  has  not  been  on  a  long  voyage  nor  seen  a  number 
of  persons  huddled  together  with  slender  conveniences.^ 

Missionary  work  has  developed  in  many  ways,  but 
these  counsels  and  qualifications  can  be  all  repeated 
in  our  own  time. 

His  emphasis  on  the  spiritual  did  not  obscure  the 
administrative.     In  the  letter  last  quoted  he  says: 

All  missionaries  or  assistants  sent  with  the  advice  and 
patronage  of  our  Board  must  be  entirely  under  our  direc- 
tion; and  this  must  be  so  thoroughly  understood  that  they 
can  never  plead  ignorance,  or  feel  themselves  at  liberty  to 
disown  the  obligation.^ 

Mr.  Evarts  was  naturally  and  by  virtue  of  the 
influence  of  his  work  a  man  of  cooperative  mind. 
He  was  doubtless  an  earnest  independent,  but 
he  saw  the  necessity  of  association  and,  if  he 
disliked  centralization  and  authority  in  the  Church, 
strove  vigorously  for  it  in   the  Board  and  desired 

•  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  142  f. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  142. 

[85] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

wider  forms  of  cooperation.  He  supported  the  Amer- 
ican Bible  Society  and  the  American  Tract  Soci- 
ety and  helped  in  all  consohdating  movements.  His 
influence  probably  also  secured  the  recognition  on 
the  part  of  each  of  its  foreign  missionary  responsi- 
bihty.  He  strove  to  induce  the  Presbyterian  and 
Dutch  Reformed  churches  to  do  their  missionary 
work  through  the  American  Board,  and  was  successful 
for  a  time  in  good  degree,  but  both  of  these  churches 
adopted  the  principle  of  which  I  have  spoken  in  con- 
nection with  Walter  Lowrie. 

I  recur  again  to  the  great  service  of  Mr.  Evarts, 
the  service  of  character.  He  was  a  man  of  noblest 
conscience.     He  wrote  once  of  himself: 

Though  sensible  of  numberless  imperfections  and  aware 
that  my  attachment  to  the  cause  of  God  has  been  feeble 
compared  with  its  paramount  claims,  and  that  my  efforts 
have  not  preserved  that  character  of  uniform  strenuousness 
which  the  urgency  of  the  case  demanded,  yet  I  can  deliber- 
ately declare  that  I  have  never  published  anything  which 
appeared  to  me  inaccurate,  unfair  or  calculated  to  mislead; 
that  I  have  never  used  an  argument  which  appeared  to  me 
unsound  or  even  doubtful;  and  that  I  have  never  proposed  or 
advocated  a  measure  which  did  not  seem  to  be  consistent  with 
the  strictest  principles  of  Christian  integrity.^ 

Others  agreed  in  this  judgment.  Professor  Stuart 
of  Andover,  who  had  been  his  pastor  in  New  Haven, 
wrote  after  his  death: 

His  private  character  was  one  of  the  most  faultless  and 
complete  that  I  have  ever  known.  Envy,  slander,  detrac- 
tion and  everything  of  this  nature,  which  forms  so  conspicu- 

» Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  227. 
[86] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

ous  a  feature  in  the  character  of  many  even  that  are  called 
Christians,  were  as  remote  from  him  as  from  any  man  that 
I  have  ever  yet  known.  Then  there  was  an  expansive,  en- 
lightened, elevated,  noble  state  of  mind  and  feehng,  that 
rendered  him  incapable  of  descending  to  the  arts  which  many 
employ,  either  to  thwart  his  opponents  or  to  throw  obstacles 
in  the  way  of  those  who  were  treading  with  himself  the  path 
to  high  esteem  and  elevated  station  in  the  minds  of  the  sober 
part  of  the  public.  All  that  was  or  could  be  gained  by  his 
fellow  Christians,  of  true  and  solid  reputation,  seemed  to  him 
to  be  clear  gain  to  the  Church,  and  therefore  to  the  stock 
whose  interests  he  was  most  engaged  to  promote.^ 

Such  a  character  is  itself  a  great  public  service. 

We  have  emphasized  so  much  his  active  personal 
quahties  that  it  needs  to  be  added  that  Mr.  Evarts 
was  a  man  of  prayer.  He  often  urged  prayer  as  the 
one  supreme  missionary  agency.  He  wrote  to  the 
Ceylon  missionaries: 

We  have  no  missionary  printers  on  our  list  of  applicants, 
although  we  want  one  much  for  the  Mediterranean  and 
shall  want  one  for  Ceylon.  Pray  much  that  suitable  men 
may  offer  for  every  department  of  the  great  work.  Mis- 
sionaries seem  often  to  think  that  men  enough  of  the  right 
character  can  be  had  at  a  moment's  warning.  This  is  alto- 
gether a  mistake.  Pray  that  men  and  women  may  be  found 
who  are  thoroughly  furnished  unto  every  good  work.^ 

And  again: 

Missionaries,  of  all  men  in  the  world,  should  rely  much 
on  prayer.^ 

He  suggested  in  letters  specific  objects  of  prayer  and 

'  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  50. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  185. 
'Ibid.,  p.  186. 

[87] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

among  his  papers  was  found  the  following  undated 
memorandum: 

PLAN  OF  PRAYER^ 

I.    FOR   MYSELF 

1.  That  I  may  journey  purely  in  a  religious  manner. 

2.  That  I  may  aim  at  preserving  a  devout  temper. 

3.  That  I  may  be  preserved  from  rash  and  imprudent 
speeches  in  regard  to  the  government,  the  opposers  of  mis- 
sions or  any  other  subject. 

4.  That  I  may  cultivate  a  temper  universally  mild  and 
amiable  toward  all  men;  and  whenever  I  hear  of  sinful  ac- 
tions, before  I  say  a  word  by  way  of  censure,  remember  how 
much  I  find  to  blame  in  myself,  though  under  so  great  ad- 
vantages. 

5.  That  the  journey  may  conduce  especially  to  these  three 
objects:  my  health,  the  deliverance  of  the  Indians,  the  pro- 
motion of  the  missionary  cause. 

II.   FOR   MY  FAMILY 

1.  For  each  member,  according  to  circumstances. 

2.  That,  if  we  should  never  meet  in  this  world,  my  failures 
in  duty  may  not  prevent  their  meeting,  all  the  friends  of 
God,  in  heaven. 

3.  That  they  may  each  and  all  seek  the  favor  of  God. 

III.   FOR   THE  INDIANS 

1.  That  God  would  especially  protect  the  pious  ones,  and 
preserve  them. 

2.  That  inquirers  may  not  be  diverted. 

3.  That  those  who  are  tempted  to  drinking  and  other  sins 
may  be  withheld  and  restrained. 

4.  That  in  none  of  the  tribes  the  poor  may  be  betrayed  by 
their  chiefs  or  abandoned  whites. 

5.  That  the  friends  of  the  Indians,  in  Congress  and  out, 

•  Tracy,  "Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Jeremiah  Evarts,"  p.  428  f. 
[88] 


JEREMIAH  EVARTS 

may  be  cautious,  prudent,  and  so  forth,  but  especially  not 
lacking  in  zeal. 

6.  That  our  government  may  be  withheld,  and  so  forth. 

7.  That  the  minds  of  the  rulers  of  Georgia  may  be  so 
directed  as  not  to  proceed  to  extremities. 

8.  That  some  peacemaker  may  arise  who  shall  obtain  a 
hearing  for  both  sides. 

9.  That  the  right  of  the  Indians  may  be  vindicated  and  the 
honor  of  the  country  preserved. 

IV.    PRAYER  FOR   OUR   BOARD   AND  FOR   MISSIONS   GENERALLY 

I  wish  to  add  a  closing  word  about  the  interests  of 
these  men — Fuller  and  Chalmers  and  Lowrie  and 
Evarts — outside  of  their  own  distinct  sphere.  They 
cannot  be  called  wider  interests.  But  each  of  these  men 
did  a  work  beyond  the  limits  of  his  specific  missionary 
service.  Fuller  was  a  great  evangelical  leader  in  the 
thought  and  Hfe  of  the  churches  of  England  and 
Scotland.  Duff  in  India  was  the  most  conspicuous 
citizen  of  Calcutta,  head  of  the  Bethune  Society,  the 
most  powerful  moral  force  of  the  city,  and  later,  when 
he  returned  to  become  the  head  of  the  missions  at 
home,  he  was  that  and  more,  stepping  in  some  real 
measure  into  the  shoes  of  the  mighty  Chalmers,  as 
the  leader  of  the  church  and  the  moral  mouthpiece 
of  Scotland.  And  so  Lowrie  and  Evarts  were  men  of 
the  noblest  public  spirit.  Evarts  was  one  of  the  main- 
springs of  a  vigorous  movement  in  behalf  of  the 
better  observance  of  the  Lord's  Day  and  the  closing 
of  the  post  offices  on  that  day.  It  would  be  easy  to 
show  from  their  fives  how  catholic  were  their  interests, 
how  effective  their  public  service  and  how  valuable 
their  contributions  as  citizens  of  a  Christian  nation. 

[89] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Surely  this  is  right.  The  offices  of  such  men  give  them 
a  platform,  from  which  they  have  a  right  and  a  duty 
to  speak  for  all  righteousness.  Such  men  must  needs 
be  more  careful  than  men  without  official  relation- 
ship to  great  public  benevolences,  for  they  have  no 
right  to  compromise  or  imperil  these.  But  by  noble 
activity  in  other  spheres,  by  discharging  fully  their 
duties  as  citizens  and  as  men,  by  contributing  to 
the  moral  and  spiritual  force  of  their  time  in  their  own 
land,  they  promote  also  the  missionary  cause  which 
they  serve,  and  strengthen  its  foundations  by  sub- 
jecting to  it  the  general  confidence  and  regard  of  their 
fellows.  Happy  should  those  men  be  to  whom  the 
privilege  of  following  in  their  steps  is  given. 


[90] 


STUDY  THREE 


[90 


Paul  Sawayama 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

AND     THE     PRINCIPLE     OF     THE     INDEPENDENT 
NATIONAL    CHURCH 


The  two  preeminent  names  on  the  roll  of  the 
Japanese  who  have  Hved  and  died  for  the  Christian 
faith  are  those  of  Joseph  Neesima  and  Paul  Sawayama. 
In  worldly  fame  other  names  have  outshone  that  of 
Sawayama.  There  have  been  Christian  statesmen 
Hke  Nakashima,  speaker  of  the  first  Diet,  and  Kataoka 
Kenkichi,  chosen  five  times  to  the  same  high  office, 
and  Mr.  Ebara;  soldiers  like  General  Kuroki  and 
sailors  Hke  Admiral  Uriu  and  Admiral  Serata;  influ- 
ential women  like  the  wives  of  Count  Katsura,  the 
prime  minister  during  the  war  with  Russia,  of  Admiral 
Togo  and  of  General  Oyama.  But  no  man  accom- 
plished more,  or  more  deeply  affected  the  spirit  and 
ideals  of  the  Christian  Church  in  Japan  than  Neesima 
and  Sawayama.  Neesima  laid  the  foundations  of 
Christian  education  in  Japan,  and  Sawayama  the 
corner  stone  of  the  Independent  Japanese  Church. 

Neesima's  story  is  as  well  known  as  any  story  in 
missionary  history,  and  what  he  was  and  did  and  the 
flavor  of  his  rare  and  loyal  Kfe  are  preserved  for  us 
and  made  available  to  every  reader  in  the  biographies 
which  Dr.  J.  D.  Davis  and  Arthur  S.  Hardy  have 
written.  It  is  a  Hfe  story  with  significant  lessons  to 
the  student  of  missionary  problems  and  racial  devel- 

[93] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

opment,  and  those  lessons,  drawn  from  Neesima^s 
own  life  and  work,  and  their  sequel,  have  influenced 
and  are  influencing  still  the  thought  and  actions  of 
men  in  many  lands.  But  Sawayama's  name  and 
achievement  are  unknown  outside  of  Japan  and  even 
in  Japan  have  been  forgotten  by  many.  President 
Naruse  of  the  Woman's  University  in  Tokyo  has 
written  a  loving  little  memoir  of  him,  but  not  a  finger 
would  Sawayama  himself  have  Hfted  to  perpetuate 
his  memory.  He  was  one  whose  only  ambition  it 
was  to  lose  his  Hfe  in  the  triumph  of  the  principles 
to  which  his  life  was  given.  Those  principles  are 
the  fundamental  principles  of  the  missionary  enter- 
prise. There  are  few  lives  in  which  we  can  better 
study  them  than  in  his,  and  few  which  have  done  so 
much  to  show  that  the  highest  ideals  of  missions  are 
entirely  practicable,  that  the  zeal  and  love,  the  power 
and  vitality  of  the  Apostolic  Church  are  recover- 
able, and  that  what  the  gospel  found  or  created  in 
Paul  and  the  workers  who  were  gathered  around  him, 
it  can  find  or  create  in  men  of  every  race  to-day. 

Mr.  Naruse  tells  us  that  Sawayama  was  bom  in  185 1 
in  the  Province  of  Choshu,  under  the  shadow  of  Mount 
Idsumi,  just  before  Perry's  visit,  in  the  seventeenth 
year  before  the  Japanese  Revolutionary  War,  which 
overthrew  the  shogun  and  feudaHsm,  brought  the 
emperor  out  of  his  retirement  to  assume  actual  sov- 
ereignty, and  introduced  the  European  system  of 
government  and  Western  civilization  and  education. 
The  years  of  his  boyhood  were  exciting  years  in  the 
shogun's  capital,  where  the  shogun  himself  was  slowly 
opening  the  country  to  the  new  ideas  and  unknow- 

[94] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

ingly  preparing  the  way  for  his  own  downfall  by  his 
zeal  for  the  highest  interests  of  the  nation.  The 
exciting  discussions  of  the  capital  could  hardly  have 
reached  Sawayama's  village  or  have  touched  the  life 
of  the  boy  who  grew  up  under  the  order  of  the  ancient 
times.  Mr.  Naruse,  who  was  born  ten  years  later 
in  the  same  village,  has  drawn  a  picture  of  the  edu- 
cation which  he  and  other  lads  like  Sawayama,  sons 
of  the  samurai,  or  knights  of  the  old  feudal  order, 
received  in  their  village.     He  says: 

It  consisted  chiefly  in  learning  to  read  and  write,  in  hear- 
ing lectures,  making  poems,  calculating  numbers,  drawing 
and  fencing.  In  the  early  morning,  before  breakfast,  we 
were  taught  reading;  in  the  daytime  we  listened  to  lectures, 
and  in  the  evening  we  were  taught  calculation.  .  .  .  Some- 
times we  were  made  to  go  to  school  barefoot  in  the  snow  or 
over  the  hoarfrost.  These  things,  which  may  seem  Hke 
hard  treatment — and  there  were  many  such  things  in  a  boy's 
education — were  regarded  as  no  less  important  a  part  in  edu- 
cation than  were  the  studies  which  we  pursued.  For  by  such 
treatment  the  parents  of  the  samurai  class  sought  to  develop 
in  their  children  what  they  call  "  Yamato-damashi,"  the 
Japanese  spirit,  that  is,  the  spirit  of  self-denial,  of  self- 
sacrifice  for  prince  and  country.  ...  In  all  my  life  I  never 
disobeyed  my  father,  nor  can  I  remember  a  single  instance 
in  which  I  remonstrated  by  even  so  much  as  a  word  or  sign 
against  any  command  of  his. 

It  was  from  this  class  of  the  samurai  that  the 
Christian  Church  was  chiefly  built  up  in  Japan.  The 
destruction  of  feudaKsm  in  1868  broke  up  their  rela- 
tionships and  destroyed  their  occupations.  They 
were  the  most  intelhgent  class  of  the  population  and 
many  of  them  turned  to  Christianity  and  embraced 

[95] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

it  and  became  its  earnest  propagators,  supporting  it 
and  serving  it  in  the  same  loyal  spirit  in  which  they 
had  maintained  their  feudal  duties.  This  predomi- 
nance of  the  samurai  element  in  the  Church  is  still 
its  chief  strength  and  weakness.  As  a  thoughtful 
and  experienced  missionary  writes: 

If  you  look  for  the  source  of  the  financial  weakness  and  the 
unsatisfactory  history  of  the  Church  in  Japan  in  regard  to 
relations  with  the  missionary  body,  you  will  find  that  one 
fact  explains  both.  It  has  been  the  poor  but  proud  samurai 
who  have  filled  the  churches  and  the  ministry.  They  have 
been  to  us  a  strength  and  a  weakness,  our  pride  and  our  tor- 
ment. The  Heimin,  or  plebeian  population,  have  been  too 
ignorant  and  supersitious,  too  much  under  the  domination  of 
their  Buddhist  priests  and  their  Shinto  schoolmasters,  to 
open  the  ear  to  the  Word.  But  we  are  at  last  getting  at  the 
Heimin,  and  there  are  better  days  ahead  We  shall  never 
have  substantial,  steady  churches  till  they  are  made  up  less 
of  samurai  officials,  army  and  navy  men,  teachers  and 
students,  and  more  of  plain  farmers,  business  men  and  work- 
men. And  there  is  a  stronger  tendency  now  on  the  part 
of  these  classes  to  come  into  the  Church. 

As  a  boy  Sawayama  was  busy  in  mihtary  affairs, 
rendering  brave  service  in  defending  his  native 
province  from  the  shogun's  troops.  He  was  sent  to 
the  best  teachers  in  the  province,  and  after  the  Civil 
War  gave  himself  to  study,  attending  the  most  famous 
schools  of  Japan.  He  was  evidently  a  thoughtful, 
reverent  lad,  who  was  feeling  after  something  deeper 
than  lay  upon  the  surface.  As  a  boy  he  had  heard  a 
lecture  on  the  sennin.  Sennin  was  the  name  given 
to  an  imaginary  creature,  supposed  to  be  more  than 
a  mere  man.     It  denoted  a  being  something  Hke  an 

[96] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

angel  who  had  been  transformed  from  a  man  by  ex- 
traordinary physical  and  mental  exercises. 

The  boy  was  so  impressed  by  what  he  heard  of 
these  happy  beings  that  he  aspired  to  become  one, 
and  on  the  pretext  of  going  to  meet  a  friend  "he 
ascended  a  mountain  and  stayed  there  several  days, 
hoping  to  become  a  sennin.  When  he  got  hungry  he 
subsisted  upon  wild  fruits  or  roots  of  plants,  and 
sometimes  he  went  down  to  the  country  and  begged 
food  from  farmers,  and  then  returned  to  the  mountain 
again.  But  he  was  unsuccessful  in  these  attempts,  of 
course,  and  he  lost  all  hope  of  becoming  a  sennin,  and 
returned  home.  This  incident,"  adds  Mr.  Naruse, 
''shows  his  intense  nature  and  his  determination  to 
realize  his  ideals." 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  Japanese  are  lacking 
in  deep  feehng  and  in  reverence  and  in  religious  senti- 
ment. One  who  lived  a  long  time  among  them  on  as 
intimate  terms  as  any  foreigners  enjoyed  wrote: 

The  Japanese  are  exceedingly  frivolous,  are  lacking  serious- 
ness in  their  disposition  and  abound  in  levity,  are  little 
affected  by  the  grand  or  the  sublime,  have  few  enthusiasms 
and  inspirations,  are  too  fickle  to  know  true  placidity  of  mind 
and  too  callous  to  escape  from  falling  into  cold  indifference, 
have  Httle  acquaintance  with  deep  sorrow,  and  "there  is  no 
Fifty-first  Psalm  in  their  language  and  no  Puritan  in  their 
history." 

But  Sawayama,  even  before  his  conversion  to  Chris- 
tianity, was  of  a  wholly  different  type  of  character 
from  this,  and  in  general  it  may  be  questioned  whether 
the  judgment  which  I  have  quoted  does  any  more 
justice  to  the  Japanese  than  the  representations  of 

[97] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Dickens'  "American  Notes,"  or  Kipling's  'Trom  Sea 
to  Sea,"  for  example,  do  to  the  American  spirit.  It 
is  well  to  remember,  with  regard  to  the  lack  of  rever- 
ence and  rehgious  feeling,  as  Mr.  Winther  points  out 
in  a  valuable  pamphlet  on  "The  Present  Religious 
Spirit  and  Problems  in  Japan,"  "that  things  are  not 
what  they  seem." 

This  is  eminently  applicable  to  Japan.  And  it  is  the  very 
religions  of  Japan  that  are  responsible  for  this  condition. 

One  of  the  chief  requirements  of  Buddhism  is  the  mortifica- 
tion of  all  desire,  all  emotion;  but  the  Japanese  are,  in  reality, 
deeply  and  strongly  emotional;  they  are  often  swayed  by 
emotion  in  a  truly  surprising  manner.  Consequently,  they 
have  not  been  able  to  fulfill  this  great  requirement;  what 
they  have  done,  as  the  next  best  thing,  is  to  conceal  their 
emotions,  and  as  far  as  possible  suppress  every  manifestation 
of  feeling,  even  the  religious. 

They  appear  so  irrehgious  just  because  they  are  religious. 

They  appear  stolid,  indifferent,  hard,  unmoved  or  "sick- 
eningly  heartless,"  as  a  newcomer  is  apt  to  think  and  say. 
But  he  who  learns  to  know  the  Japanese  as  individuals  will, 
as  a  rule,  find  a  warm,  easily  moved,  sensitive  heart  behind 
that  callous  exterior. 

At  one  time  my  next-door  neighbors  were  an  old  couple 
whose  only  son  was  in  the  war;  as  they  could  not  read,  I 
generally  read  such  portions  of  the  news  from  the  battle  field 
as  I  knew  would  be  of  interest  to  them.  One  day  I  read  of 
some  dreadful  engagement  in  which  we  had  reason  to  believe 
that  their  son  had  taken  part.  While  I  read  the  tears  ran 
freely  down  their  faces,  for  they  feared  they  would  never  see 
their  son  again.  Then  steps  were  heard  outside.  In  a 
moment  the  tears  were  wiped  away  and  the  visitor  admitted 
in  the  most  cheerful  manner.  When  he  asked  if  they  had 
news  from  their  son,  they  both  laughed  and  joked  about 
"that  rake,"  as  if  he  were  of  no  more  concern  to  them  than  a 
worthless  dog.    Had  we  not  been  as  good  friends  as  we  were, 

[98] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

I,  too,  would  have  seen  only  the  smiling  face  and  heard  only 
the  joking,  apparently  heartless,  words,  and  I  would  doubt- 
less have  passed  some  pretty  severe  criticism  on  the  lack  of 
feeling  and  afifection  in  Japan. 

The  Confucian  training  and  the  samurai  spirit, 
which  drew  far  more  from  Confucianism  than  it  did 
from  Buddhism,  taught  men  Hke  Sawayama  to 
exercise  self-control. 

"While  there  are  no  strivings  of  pleasure,  anger, 
sorrow  or  joy,  the  mind  may  be  said  to  be  in  the  state 
of  equilibrium.  When  these  feelings  are  aroused,  if 
they  act  in  their  due  degree,  there  ensues  what  may 
be  called  the  state  of  harmony.  This  equihbrium  is 
the  great  root  from  which  all  that  is  good  in  Ufe  springs; 
and  this  is  the  path  which  all  should  pursue." 

This  was  the  philosophy  which  samurai,  like  all 
"superior  men"  in  China,  Korea  and  Japan,  were 
taught  to  obey.    Mr.  Naruse  says: 

I  remember  when  my  mother  and  my  aunt  and  my  younger 
brother  died,  how  I,  as  a  child,  could  not  control  myself,  but 
wept  bitterly;  but  my  father  preserved  his  tranquiUty  of 
mind  perfectly  and  I  never  saw  a  tear  so  much  as  start  to  his 
eye.  In  one  instant,  indeed,  he  came  near  losing  his  envied 
harmony  for  a  moment;  but  he  only  came  near  losing  it  and 
only  for  a  moment.  A  few  days  before  his  own  death,  while 
he  was  enfeebled  by  a  very  severe  illness,  the  sad  report  came 
to  him  that  my  younger  brother  had  died  suddenly  at  a 
remote  place.  I  was  at  his  side  when  the  news  came  and  I 
saw  him  cover  his  face  for  an  instant  with  the  comforter; 
but  when  he  looked  up  again  I  saw  no  trace  of  tears. 

But,  after  all,  human  nature  is  not  very  different, 
no  matter  how  diverse  or  prolonged  its  divisive  edu- 

[99] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

cation  may  have  been.  When,  in  October,  191 2,  Mrs. 
T.  C.  Winn,  who  for  thirty-five  years  had  been  a 
missionary  among  the  Japanese,  died  in  the  town  of 
Senkinsai,  Manchuria,  the  Manchurian  Railway 
Company,  which  had  been  accustomed  to  give  her 
passes  annually  and  to  open  its  railroad  stations  for 
services,  placed  a  special  car  at  her  husband's  disposal 
to  take  the  body  to  Dairen,  crowds  came  to  the  sta- 
tions to  see  the  train  pass,  the  directors  met  the  body 
at  the  station  in  Dairen,  the  Christians  insisted  on 
defraying  the  entire  expense  of  the  funeral,  the  Japan- 
ese women  wept  aloud  in  the  church,  and  the  railway 
company  had  portraits  of  Mrs.  Winn  printed,  with 
an  account  of  her  life  and  work,  and  placed  them  in  all 
the  street  cars  in  Dairen  under  the  title  ^'The  Loving 
Mother."  There  was  the  same  affection  and  the 
same  display  of  affection  that  there  would  have  been 
in  any  Western  land.  "There  is  no  racial  chasm 
between  the  East  and  the  West,"  says  Mr.  Ebina  of 
Tokyo.  "More  and  more  the  Japanese  are  entering 
into  the  feehngs  and  looking  at  things  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  West;  rejoicing  with  those  that  rejoice 
and  weeping  with  those  that  weep." 

Genuine  and  fervent  as  Sawayama's  religious  long- 
ings were,  there  was  nothing  in  any  religion  of  which 
he  knew  that  could  satisfy  them.  The  present-day 
version  of  Bushido  as  an  ethical  code  which  is  supposed 
to  have  satisfied  the  Japanese  heart  for  many  cen- 
turies, and  the  present-day  idea  of  the  divine  person 
of  the  emperor  as  furnishing  in  himself  and  in  the 
shadowy  line  of  his  divine  ancestors  a  basis  of  moral 
loyalty  and  a  sanction  of  reKgion,  are  both  too  modem 

[,00] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

and  too  empty  to  content  the  hunger  of  a  living  spirit. 
Count  Okuma  has  frankly  said  as  much.  The  better 
classes  of  Japan,  he  told  the  missionaries  at  the 
Jubilee  of  Protestant  Missions  in  Japan,  ''are  spiritu- 
ally thirsty  and  have  nothing  to  drink."  Sawayama 
awoke  to  this  thirst  forty  years  ago,  and  found 
nothing  to  quench  it  in  Confucianism  or  Buddhism, 
in  Shinto  or  Bushido.  He  went  especially  to  drink 
at  the  fountain  of  one  Shuyo  Foshimura  of  Shikoku, 
noted  for  his  knowledge  of  the  teachings  of  Confucius 
and  for  the  constancy  of  his  life  as  a  Confucianist. 
Sawayama  became  his  disciple  and  "in  time  mastered 
the  ethics  and  philosophy  of  the  great  sage,"  but  he 
found  no  bread  for  his  hunger  and  no  drink  for  his 
thirst. 

When  he  was  nineteen  years  of  age  Sawayama  found 
his  way  to  the  bread  that  is  true  bread  and  to  the 
water  of  which  if  a  man  drinks  he  shall  not  thirst  any 
more.  Dr.  D.  C.  Greene,  the  first  missionary  of  the 
American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign 
Missions  in  Japan,  was  then  living  in  Kobe,  and  in  the 
spring  of  1870  two  of  the  retainers  of  the  Daimyo 
of  Choshu  came  to  him  to  learn  Western  habits  of 
life  that  they  might  be  prepared  for  responsible  places 
in  their  prince's  household.  After  a  while  they  asked 
permission  to  bring  with  them  a  son  of  their  imme- 
diate superior  in  the  service  of  the  prince,  and  when 
permission  was  given,  they  brought  Sawayama.  Dr. 
Greene  says: 

He  presented  a  very  striking  appearance.  He  had,  ap- 
parently, but  recently  recovered  from  an  attack  of  smallpox, 
and  his  hair,  which  he  wore  in  semiforeign  style,  had  not  yet 

[10.] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

become  wonted  to  the  new  treatment,  but  there  was  in  his 
face  that  expression  of  mingled  modesty  and  firmness  which 
always  conspicuously  marked  his  features.  He  took  up  the 
study  of  English  with  much  earnestness  and  made  rapid 
progress,  but  he  was  dissatisfied.  He  thought  that  if  he  could 
spend  more  time  in  the  family  he  might  familiarize  his  ear 
to  English  conversation  and  so  asked  to  be  allowed  to  spend 
the  day  in  my  study.  We  had  already  become  attached  to 
him  and  readily  gave  our  consent.  He  used  to  come  every 
day  at  about  seven  in  the  morning  and  remain  until  after 
four  in  the  afternoon.  He  was  diligent  with  his  books  and 
most  careful  to  avoid  causing  any  inconvenience  to  our  house- 
hold— indeed,  he  was  always  ready  with  his  offers  of  help  when 
there  seemed  any  chance  of  his  being  of  service  to  us.  This 
practice  he  kept  up  for  nearly  a  year. 

He  was  a  constant  attendant  at  our  family  worship,  but 
we  had  no  definite  evidence  of  any  faith  in  Christianity, 
though  he  seemed  to  find  pleasure  in  the  society  of  one  or  two 
other  Japanese  who  did  manifest  much  interest.  One  of  these, 
Ichikawa  Yeinosuke,  had  asked  for  baptism.  Ichikawa, 
with  his  wife,  was  arrested  in  the  spring  of  187 1  (Meiji  Yonen) 
on  suspicion  of  being  a  Christian  and,  after  confinement  for  a 
year  and  a  half,  died  in  the  Nijo  Castle  of  Kyoto,  a  true  mar- 
tyr to  his  faith. 

What  was  taking  place  in  Sawayama  was  con- 
cealed both  from  Dr.  Greene  and  from  himself,  but 
when  in  1872  he  came  to  Northwestern  University  in 
Evanston,  Illinois,  and  the  great  ideas  which  had 
been  sown  in  his  soul  began  to  expand,  he  realized 
that  he  was  a  Christian  and  that  God  had  called  him 
before  he  knew  it. 

He  was  baptized  by  Rev.  Edward  N.  Packard  in 
the  First  Congregational  Church  of  Evanston,  and  at 
once  began,  though  his  English  was  still  imperfect,  to 
take  part  in  the  work  of  the  church  and  "his  words 

[102] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

had  a  peculiar  power  about  them  as  if  sent  by  the 
Spirit."  His  baptism  was  a  great  crisis  and  testing. 
When  he  left  Japan,  one  of  his  teachers  tells  us,  ''his 
father  was  required  to  give  bonds  to  the  effect  that 
Sawayama  should  not  change  his  religion.  When  he 
came  to  make  a  pubHc  profession  here  he  was  asked  if 
he  did  not  fear  that  his  father  would  suffer  on  account 
of  the  bonds  he  had  given?  Sawayama  repHed,  'The 
Lord  will  take  care  of  that.'  And  his  faith  was 
honored." 

There  seemed  to  be  no  moral  refuse  which  he  needed 
to  slough  off.  It  was  good  material  on  which  the 
Spirit  of  God  had  chosen  to  work,  and  no  student 
in  his  classes  was  more  earnest  and  eager,  and  there 
was  none  in  whom  Christian  character  was  more 
rapidly  fixing  itself  in  purity  and  strength.  For  the 
first  three  years  of  his  studies  in  America  he  seems  to 
have  expected  to  return  to  Japan  for  government 
service,  but  soon,  to  him,  as  to  Neesima,  came  the 
great  purpose  which  made  all  political  service  seem  of 
secondary  value.  A  missionary  at  home  on  furlough 
urged  him  to  prepare  for  Christian  work  in  Japan. 
Shortly  after,  as  Mr.  Naruse  tells  us, 

he  had  been  reading  the  biography  of  some  Christian  mis- 
sionary, and  the  thought  seemed  to  come  to  him  almost  as  a 
revelation  that  the  need  of  Japan  was  the  preaching  of  the 
gospel.  He  thought  much,  and  more  and  more  the  convic- 
tion grew  and  strengthened  within  him  that  the  darkness 
which  covered  Japanese  society  with  so  many  sorrows  and 
sins  in  its  shadow,  could  never  be  effectually  dissipated 
except  by  the  power  of  Christianity;  and  who  could  be  called 
of  God  to  preach  to  Japan,  if  not  himself?  He  said  to  his 
awakened    heart,   ^'The   people   of   foreign   countries   have 

[103] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

sacrificed  their  lives  to  be  missionaries  to  Japan,  how  can  I 
see  the  condition  of  my  own  people  so  indifferently?"  He 
decided  to  proclaim  upon  the  housetops  what  he  had  heard 
in  the  ear. 

This  new  purpose  seemed  to  fuse  the  elements  of 
his  nature  into  a  glowing  and  unified  energy.  It 
elevated  his  whole  spirit  and  brought  a  consecration 
which  forever  after  deepened  without  abatement. 
One  in  whose  home  he  lived  for  his  last  three  years  in 
Evanston  says  that  in  "his  heroic  self-sacrifice,  his 
sensitive  conscientiousness  and  the  childlike  sim- 
pHcity  of  his  faith  he  seemed  to  have  caught  the  spirit 
of  the  apostolic  age." 

When  this  decision  had  been  made,  something 
stirred  in  him  the  premonition  that  the  time  was  short 
and  that  he  must  work  the  works  of  Him  that  sent 
him  while  it  was  day.  Against  the  judgment  of 
his  friends,  he  decided  to  curtail  his  course,  and 
Dr.  Packard,  while  counseling  fuller  preparation,  yet 
offered  to  help  him  in  his  plan.     Dr.  Packard  writes: 

I  arranged  with  him  to  come  to  my  study  from  time  to 
time  and  to  talk  over  the  Christian  scheme.  We  used  as  a 
textbook  Hodge's  ''Way  of  Life,"  and  it  proved  to  be  an 
excellent  book  for  the  purpose.  He  became  attracted  to 
Paul  and  his  theology,  and  took  the  name  of  Paul  for  this 
reason.  After  weeks  of  study  and  conference  he  suddenly 
seemed  to  come  out  into  light  and  to  receive  what  I  can  only 
think  of  as  a  "baptism  of  the  Holy  Spirit." 

His  idea  as  to  truth  clarified  suddenly,  and  he  told  me  that 
he  felt  confident  that  he  could  go  and  meet  the  objections 
which  his  friends  in  Japan  might  bring  up.  Soon  after  this, 
to  our  surprise,  he  began  to  plan  to  get  back  to  his  native 
land,  and  his  persistence  and  faith  were  remarkable.     I  used 

[104] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

to  say  that,  if  no  other  way  would  ofifer,  Sawayama  would 
take  an  open  boat  and  row  across  the  Pacific  Ocean.  .  .  . 
No  man  ever  went  to  a  great  task  with  more  enthusiasm. 
I  always  felt  a  strong  attraction  to  him  for  his  many  fine  quaU- 
ties  and  for  something  indescribable,  which  was  the  indwell- 
ing of  the  Spirit  in  him.  He  had  clear  views  of  truth  which 
seemed  to  have  come  direct  from  the  source  of  all  truth 
direct  to  him,  and  not  through  books.  His  good  nature,  his 
plain  and  simple  scheme  of  living  for  Christ  were  a  lifelong 
lesson  and  blessing  to  me. 


When  some  one  remonstrated  with  him  over  his 
course  and  urged  more  learning  and  more  thorough 
preparation,  his  reply  was,  *'I  have  as  much  learning 
as  the  apostles  had."  His  country  was  in  need. 
InfideUty  was  not  delaying.  He  had  a  work  given 
him  to  do.  He  was  straitened  until  it  should  be 
accompHshed.  The  event  justified  his  course.  In 
eleven  short  years  his  summons  came.  He  had,  in- 
deed, all  the  equipment  he  needed  for  his  task.  More 
might  only  have  been  a  burden  to  him  and  have 
weighed  down  the  freedom  and  dauntless  activity  of 
his  apostoHc  zeal.  Knowledge  is  not  always  power; 
some  men  take  on  more  than  they  can  use  and  are 
made  weak  and  ineffective  by  it.  An  elaborate  train- 
ing might  have  convinced  Sawayama  that  apostolic 
methods  were  good  enough  for  apostolic  times,  but 
impracticable  to-day.  Many  men  go  out  of  our 
schools  with  the  nerve  of  a  daring  faith  deadened  by 
criticism  or  self-consciousness.  They  have  studied 
so  much  history  that  they  have  missed  Hfe,  and  while 
they  made  ready  for  movement,  some  of  the  fires 
have  died  down  and  gone  out.    It  is  not  always  so  with 

[i°5] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

men,  and  when  it  is  not  so,  the  issue  is  the  man  of 
largest  power,  but  in  many  a  Christian  land  and  in 
many  a  mission  field  to-day  men  are  overtrained  for 
their  work  and  incapacitated  by  their  training  for 
real  leadership.  Sawayama  went  back  with  all  that 
he  needed  and  for  the  next  ten  years  was  a  "lamp  that 
burneth  and  shineth." 


[io6] 


n 

The  warm  glow  and  enthusiasm  of  Sawayama's 
first  Christian  experience  never  subsided.  Too  often 
we  lay  out  our  work  with  the  expectation  that  the 
first  bloom  and  eagerness  of  Christian  faith  cannot 
last,  and  when  we  get  what  we  thus  expected  we 
comfort  ourselves  with  the  reflection  that  first  Chris- 
tian zeal  invariably  moderates  and  wanes  with  time. 
Too  often  this  is  so,  but  when  it  is,  it  is  a  repudia- 
tion, not  an  illustration,  of  the  will  of  God.  Men  and 
churches  ought  to  go  not  from  revival  to  declension, 
but  from  strength  to  strength.  Sawayama  did  not 
Hberalize  his  theology,  dilute  his.evangehsm,  or  temper 
the  intensity  of  his  adherence  to  his  ideals.  The  fires 
of  his  life  burned  fine  and  full  to  the  very  end. 

It  is  but  fair,  also,  to  point  out  that  Sawayama's 
education  in  America  was  unquaHfiedly  beneficial 
to  him  and  his  work.  That  is  true  of  many  of  the 
young  men  who  have  come  from  Japan  to  study  in 
the  West.  It  is  not  true  of  most  of  the  young  men 
of  Western  Asia  and  perhaps  of  India.  These  men 
seem  unable  to  assimilate  and  carry  the  Western  edu- 
cation secured  in  the  West.  Not  one  out  of  twenty, 
perhaps  one  out  of  fifty,  of  the  young  men  from 
Turkey,  Syria  and  Persia  who  have  studied  in  Amer- 
ica have  escaped  injury  from  it  or  have  gone  back  to 
exercise  a  real  and  wholesome  leadership  among  their 
people.  The  early  attempt  of  the  American  Board 
to  train  natives  of  mission  fields  in  America,  though 

['07] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

SO  well  intentioned  and  so  reasonable  to  the  Kmited 
experience  of  that  day,  proved  a  convincing  demon- 
stration of  the  importance  of  educating  men  in  and 
for  the  conditions  in  which  they  are  to  do  their  work. 
This  principle  is  clearly  accepted  here  in  America. 
'The  American  Inter-Church  College"  in  Nashville, 
for  the  training  of  the  religious  and  social  workers 
needed  in  the  South,  names  this  as  one  of  the  nine 
arguments  for  its  establishment: 

Because  students  trained  in  Northern  institutions  are  not, 
as  a  rule,  qualified  to  understand  and  meet  the  conditions 
and  needs  peculiar  to  the  South.  This  long-range  education 
for  social  service  is  a  failure  for  the  reason  that  one  is  too 
often  educated  out  of  his  life  work  rather  than  trained  into  it. 

Sawayama,  however,  took  only  good  and  no  harm 
from  his  study  abroad.  Others  have  not  only  taken 
harm  from  such  study,  but  have  gone  back  to  paralyze 
the  native  church  and  to  debase  the  whole  missionary 
spirit  and  ideal  by  their  scale  of  life  and  the  subsidies 
which  they  have  secured  from  American  Christians 
under  the  idea  that  such  men,  supported  from  America, 
are  efficient  missionary  agents.  Sawayama,  as  we 
shall  see,  not  only  went  back  unspoiled,  with  a 
Christian  faith  won  and  established,  not  weakened 
and  destroyed,  and  with  a  resolute,  devotional,  zealous 
Christian  spirit  undaunted,  but  also  with  Pauline 
ideas  of  personal  character  and  missionary  policy. 

As  we  have  noted,  when  he  formed  his  purpose  to 
return  to  Japan  as  a  Christian  preacher,  he  took  the 
name  of  Paul.  He  held  fast  always  to  the  Pauline 
theology.     He   never  was   lured   away   from   Paul's 

[io8] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

conception  of  the  Person  of  our  Lord,  or  from  the 
pure  evangelical  experience  of  the  gospel.  His  ser- 
mons and  letters  were  full  of  Paul's  expressions.  In- 
stead of  imagining  that  we  get  at  the  real  gospel  by 
eliminating  Paul,  he  knew  that  the  view  of  the  gospel 
which  we  get  through  the  Spirit  of  God  in  Paul  gives 
us  a  Christ  in  comparison  with  whom  the  versions  of 
Christianity  which  repudiate  the  PauHne  view  are 
dead  crusts,  spent  arrows,  futile  appeals  to  dry  wells 
to  fill  themselves — afterglows  whose  only  light  is  a 
memory  of  a  sun  going  down.  If  we  gained  a  greater 
salvation,  a  more  supernatural  Saviour,  a  vaster  God, 
by  repudiating  Paul,  it  would  be  different.  But  the 
liberal  Christianity  in  Japan,  with  which  some  would 
supersede  Sawayama's  simple  New  Testament  faith, 
is  a  tame  and  vapid  thing,  possessing  neither  the  intel- 
lectual vitality  nor  the  moral  power  which  alone  can 
satisfy  the  needs  of  personal  or  national  life. 

It  was  not  alone  in  his  theology  and  religious  ex- 
perience that  Sawayama  resembled  Paul.  He  adopted 
by  instinct  Paul's  great  missionary  principles,  namely, 
the  direct  preaching  of  the  gospel,  in  which  he  con- 
sciously and  unswervingly  sought  to  follow  Paul  as  his 
model,  and  the  creation,  as  the  result  of  such  preach- 
ing, of  an  independent  and  living  Church.  His 
faith  that  the  gospel  was  the  power  of  God  unto  sal- 
vation, and  that  the  most  effective  mode  of  propagat- 
ing it  was  by  preaching  it  with  a  life  of  Hmitless  love, 
and  that  out  of  such  preaching  autonomous  and  in- 
digenous Christian  churches  would  grow  to-day  as 
they  did  in  the  apostolic  age,  ^'flowed  like  a  burning 
river  and  took  shape  in  the  estabHshment  of  the  first 

[109] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

independent  Christian  church  in  Japan."  To  him 
more  than  to  any  other  one  man  do  the  Christian 
churches  in  Japan  to-day  owe  the  generally  accepted 
ideal  of  the  independent  native  church  as  the  only 
right  ideal.  I  use  the  term  "native  church"  with- 
out hesitancy  or  apology.  Some  people  nowadays 
tell  us  that  we  ought  not  to  use  the  word  "native" — 
that  it  is  a  term  of  reproach.  Some  speakers  at  the 
Edinburgh  Missionary  Conference  disapproved  of  it. 
But  of  all  places  in  the  world  Scotland  surely  is  the 
last  where  men  should  surrender  the  word  "native" 
to  unworthy  impUcations — there  where  Scott  asked, 

Breathes  there  the  man  with  soul  so  dead 
Who  never  to  himself  has  said, 
This  is  my  own,  my  native  land! 

If  natives  of  Japan  and  other  lands  dislike  being  called 
natives,  they  should  be  helped  to  worthier  ideas  and 
not  encouraged  to  lose  the  pride  of  their  own  soil. 
To  substitute  "indigenous"  and  to  speak  of  the  "in- 
digenous church"  is  ludicrous.  Are  we  to  call 
"natives"  "indigenes"  and  to  sing  of  "my  own,  my 
indigenous  land,"  or  "my  indigenous  country,  thee, 
sweet  Land  of  Liberty"?  And,  after  all,  the  words  are 
mere  counters.  The  reproach,  if  there  be  reproach, 
is  in  the  facts  that  dishonor  the  old  words  and  would 
dishonor  any  new  words  substituted  for  the  old. 

This  ideal  of  the  true  native  church,  by  which 
Paul  wrought,  dominated  Sawayama.  He  did  not 
believe  that  Christianity  could  do  its  work  for  any 
land  as  an  exotic,  or  that  the  gospel  had  lost  its 
power  to  root  itself  in  any  soil  and  Hve  there,  in  insti- 

[I.O] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

tutions  which  draw  their  nourishment  from  the  soil 
and  not  from  foreign  subsidies.  He  proved  by  actual 
achievement  that  for  which  Mr.  Allen  argues  in 
"Missionary  Methods,  St.  Paul's  or  Ours,"  where, 
with  unsparing  criticism  of  work  in  which  he  has  taken 
his  part,  he  deplores,  in  so  many  mission  fields,  the 
want  of  vitahty  and  independence  in  native  churches, 
the  dependence  of  mission  work  upon  foreign  funds, 
the  feeble  type  of  Christian  Hfe  developed,  the  need 
of  Kving  unity,  the  absence  of  the  glow,  the  daring, 
the  impact  of  apostoHc  rehgion.  And  Mr.  Allen 
laments  the  possibility  of  the  enervating. dominance 
of  the  foreigner: 

If  the  first  converts  are  taught  to  depend  upon  the  mis- 
sionary, if  all  work,  evangelistic,  educational,  social,  is  con- 
centrated in  his  hands,  the  infant  community  learns  to  rest 
passively  upon  the  man  from  whom  they  receive  their  first 
insight  into  the  gospel.  Their  faith  having  no  sphere  for  its 
growth  and  development  lies  dormant.  A  tradition  very 
rapidly  grows  up  that  nothing  can  be  done  without  the 
authority  and  guidance  of  the  missionary,  the  people  wait 
for  him  to  move,  and  the  longer  they  do  so,  the  more  incapable 
they  become  of  any  independent  action. 

Sawayama  proved  that  the  Christian  church  can  be 
set  up  anywhere  on  the  earth,  and  Hve  there  in  its  own 
Hfe,  by  estabUshing  such  a  church  in  Osaka.  When 
he  returned  to  Japan  in  1876  the  majority  of  the 
people  hated  Christianity  with  intense  hatred.  It 
was  still  a  disgrace  for  a  family  to  have  a  Christian 
in  its  circle.  The  educated  people  believed  in  no 
rehgion;  they  despised  the  native  priests  and  hated 
the  Christian  ministers.     Still  the  public  warnings 

[III] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

against  Christianity  had  been  removed  and  a  tide  of 
interest  and  inquiry  had  set  in.  The  great  era  of 
progress  in  missions,  which  lasted  till  1888,  had  begun. 
Sawayama  found  a  little  band  of  eleven  humble 
Christians  in  Osaka,  and,  turning  from  offers  of  lucra- 
tive employment  in  government  service  that  would 
have  paid  him  one  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  month, 
equal  to  three  times  as  much  in  America,  he  was 
ordained — the  first  Japanese  to  be  ordained  in  Japan 
— and  promised  to  become  the  pastor  of  the  little 
company  at  a  salary  of  seven  dollars  a  month.  Japan 
was  just  emerging  into  her  new  political  life  and  the 
government  needed  good  men,  trained  in  Western 
ways,  and  was  ready  to  pay  anything  for  them.  In  a 
similar  situation  in  China  to-day  the  missions  find  that 
the  only  way  to  hold  good  native  men  is  greatly  to 
increase  their  salaries,  even  though  many  are  found 
who  will  stay  at  a  sacrifice.  But  no  such  problem 
presented  itself  in  Sawayama's  case.  It  was  not  a 
matter  of  salary,  large  or  small.  He  had  his  own  ideal, 
and,  for  eleven  fellow  Christians,  he  rejected  every 
offer  and  became  pastor  of  a  self-supporting,  inde- 
pendent church.  He  solved  at  one  blow  four  of  the 
greatest  problems  of  missions — the  problem  of  the 
native  ministry,  the  problem  of  self-government, 
the  problem  of  self-support  and  the  problem  of  self- 
propagation. 

He  showed  that  the  right  solution  of  the  first  of 
these  problems  is  to  get  a  converted  man  who  has 
an  ambition  to  follow  Paul.  The  native  ministry 
ordained  in  Japan  began  with  Sawayama.  It  did  not 
begin  with  a  theological  seminary  or  a  training  school, 

[112] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

but  with  a  truly  converted  man.  Even  after  we 
have  such  men  we  need  the  schools,  and  often  where 
we  have  not  such  men  we  set  up  the  schools  in  the 
hope  that  we  can  get  them.  The  essential  thing  is 
to  get  the  Sawayamas.    Alas,  that  they  are  so  rare! 

The  second  of  these  problems  has  advanced  in 
Japan  far  beyond  the  stage  which  Sawayama's  work 
represented.  Scores  of  self-supporting  local  churches 
have  grown  up.  These  are  organized  in  a  few  strong 
denominational  bodies,  of  which  the  Kumiai  or 
Congregational  churches,  to  which  Sawayama  be- 
longed, and  the  Nihon  Kirosuto  Kyokwai  or  Presby- 
terian Church,  are  the  largest.  Each  of  these  bodies 
is  a  competent,  independent  organization,  caring  for 
itself  and  sustaining  relations  as  sovereign  churches 
to  the  foreign  missions  working  in  connection  with 
them.  The  working  out  of  these  relations  has  in- 
volved many  problems,  but  the  question  of  the  rela- 
tionship of  native  churches  and  their  leaders  to  for- 
eign missions  and  missionaries  was  not  of  concern 
to  Sawayama.  He  was  not  thinking  of  spheres  of  au- 
thority or  questions  of  relationship.  He  was  think- 
ing of  duty  and  spiritual  ideals,  and  in  pursuing  these 
the  problems  of  organization  and  interrelationship 
solved  themselves.  A  real  life,  pulsing  through  the 
work,  is  a  better  solvent  than  any  amount  of  states- 
manship. His  church  was  independent,  without  any 
declarations  or  adjustments,  because  it  had  its  own 
real,  independent  life,  due  to  its  spirit  of  entire  self- 
support  and  aggressive  self -propagation.  There  were 
the  two  other  problems  w^hich  at  the  very  outset 
Sawayama  solved  without  argument,  or  theorizing, 

["3] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

or  schemes  of  poKcy,  but  by  simply  accepting  and 
following  the  ways  of  Paul.  Let  us  speak  of  each  of 
these.     Mr.  Naruse  says: 

From  the  very  beginning  Mr.  Sawayama  held  very  firmly 
to  the  principle  that  Japanese  Christianity  should  be  self- 
supporting.  His  aim  was  to  found  a  living  Japanese  church; 
to  put  within  it  such  a  spirit  of  growth  and  independence  as 
should  set  it  free  from  its  slavish,  feeble  condition;  to  make  it  a 
permanent  power  by  the  force  of  its  own  religious  Hfe.  This 
he  thought  should  be  the  aim  of  every  Japanese  Christian.  .  .  . 
What  did  Mr.  Sawayama  mean  by  self-support  for  Japanese 
churches?  He  meant  that  the  Japanese  churches  should 
pay  their  own  expenses,  meeting  all  the  expenditures  re- 
quired for  home  missionary  work,  for  Christian  education 
and  for  church  benevolences,  without  receiving  pecuniary 
aid  for  these  purposes  from  foreign  missionary  societies. 
Those  societies,  of  course,  should  continue  to  support  their 
own  missionaries.  This  program  proved  a  very  difficult 
task  for  such  poor  bodies  as  the  Japanese  churches;  so  almost 
all  of  the  native  Christians,  except  his  church,  and  many 
foreign  missionaries,  could  not  approve  of  his  new  scheme  at 
that  time. 

But  Mr.  Sawayama  had  a  rare  insight  into  the  condition 
of  the  time  and  future  of  Japan.  There  were  a  few  Japanese 
Christian  churches  and  Christian  schools  at  that  early  day, 
but  they  had  been  started  by  means  of  foreign  funds  and 
were  managed  by  missionaries.  The  vast  majority  of  the 
Japanese  people  were  intensely  prejudiced  against  them 
because  they  seemed  to  be,  in  reahty,  foreign  churches  and 
foreign  schools.  They  also  thought  that  the  foreigners 
propagated  their  rehgion  by  the  lavish  use  of  money.  Quite 
often  the  native  Christians  were  asked  if  they  received  money 
from  foreigners  in  order  to  become  Christians.  Sometimes 
these  haters  of  Christianity  called  the  Christians  beggars 
because  they  depended  upon  foreign  funds,  and  accused  them 
of  disloyalty  to  their  own  country.    It  must  be  confessed  that 

["4] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

the  native  Christians  showed  a  strong  tendency  to  rely 
upon  the  financial  aid  of  foreigners  in  every  department  of 
Christian  work.  They  seemed  to  entertain  the  feeling  that 
they  were  the  guests  of  the  universal  Christian  Church,  and 
as  such  were  entitled  to  free  entertainment,  as  Mr.  Sawa- 
yama  said  in  his  famous  speech.  In  such  circumstances 
there  was  great  need  of  insistence  upon  the  principle  of  self- 
support.  And  there  is  no  question  that  Mr.  Sawayama's 
persistence  in  advocating  that  principle  gave  to  the  Japan- 
ese church  its  strength  and  aggressiveness. 

But  his  example  was  his  most  powerful  advocacy. 
He  himself,  as  I  have  said,  was  ordained  by  Mr. 
Neesima  and  a  company  of  missionaries,  as  the  first 
Japanese  pastor  of  a  Japanese  church,  over  the  Naniwa 
Church  in  Osaka  with  eleven  members,  whom  he 
described  as  "the  poorest  people,  who  own  neither 
house  nor  anything  hardly."  This  meant  a  readiness 
on  his  part  to  share  their  poverty  and  to  be  wiUing  to 
starve  for  an  ideal.  He  did  not  flinch.  As  he  wrote 
to  a  freind  in  America  who  sent  him  a  box  of  clothing 
two  years  after  his  return  to  Japan: 

I  have  forsaken  all  and  followed  the  Lord  in  putting 
myself  in  this  position.  .  .  .  Great  self-denial  is  necessary 
and  I  determined  to  follow  the  steps  of  the  Lord,  who  on 
earth  had  not  ''where  to  lay  his  head,"  and  so  I  could  not 
have  much  comfort  in  this  life,  I  thought;  therefore  what  a 
grateful  thing  to  me  these  presents  of  my  friends  are  you  can 
imagine.  .  .  .  Since  I  came  back  I  have  not  bought  any- 
thing and,  of  course,  I  had  no  means  to  buy.  All  these  things 
your  presents  supplied,  and  many  of  them  will  last  all  my 
life,  I  think,  if  the  Lord  will  take  me  before  very  many  years. 

Under  such  leadership  the  church  was  self-support- 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

ing  from  the  outset  and  moved  forward  into  a  great 
and  growing  life. 

This  is  exactly  what  is  openly  pronounced  to  be 
impossible  in  many  lands  and  accepted  as  an  impos- 
sibility even  where  it  is  not  avowed  to  be  so . 

Sawayama  himself  prepared  a  most  careful  state- 
ment of  his  view  and  the  arguments  for  it  and  pre- 
sented it  at  the  first  interdenominational  conference 
in  Japan  held  at  Osaka  in  May,  1881.  His  paper 
was  entitled  "The  Self-Support  of  the  Japanese 
Native  Church."  After  a  characteristically  modest 
introduction,  he  took  up  these  points: 

"i.  The  support  given  to  the  theory  of  self-support 
by  the  teaching  of  the  Scriptures. 

"2.  The  benefits  to  the  church  insured  by  the  adop- 
tion of  this  plan. 

"3.  A  state  of  self-support  is  not  unattainable.'^ 

Sawayama  solved  the  problem  of  self-support  just 
as  he  solved  the  other  problems,  not  by  coming  up  to 
it  and  examining  it  and  constructing  an  answer  to  it, 
but  by  possessing  the  life  in  which  the  forces  adequate 
to  the  solution  of  the  problem  preceded  the  definition 
of  the  problem.  There  was  a  living  power  of  faith 
within,  which  was  equal  to  the  task  of  dealing  with 
each  practical  necessity.  And  "this,  it  seems  to  me," 
wrote  a  missionary  in  Mexico  some  years  ago,  who 
had  to  wrestle  with  a  situation  of  subsidized  inertia 
in  a  native  church,  "is  the  real  bottom  question.  Is 
it  possible  to  convert  a  man  so  that  he  shall  make  a 
self-sustaining  center  in  the  place  where  he  may  be 
and  extend  the  gospel  to  others?  I  believe  it  is,  and 
that  we  ought  to  devote  ourselves  to  establishing  such 

[.,6] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

centers.  This  seems  to  me  to  be  fundamental.  And 
until  we  get  to  right  methods  of  beginning  work,  we 
shall  always  have  with  us  the  vexing  question  of  how 
to  get  out  of  what  we  ought  never  to  have  gotten  into." 
Sawayama's  church  began  with  a  group  of  converted 
men  and  women,  led  by  a  truly  converted  pastor. 
And  from  the  outset  he  and  they  recognized  that 
they  were  all  of  them  to  be  evangelists.  A  month 
after  his  ordination  he  wrote: 

1  have  in  my  church  only  eleven  members,  of  whom  eight 
are  men  and  three  are  women,  but  they  are  all  active  preach- 
ers, and  we  have,  at  present,  five  regular  preaching  places 
for  the  church  besides  our  own  chapel,  and  so  we  are  quite 
busy,  but  it  is  a  very  joyful  thing  to  be  busy  in  the  Master's 
work.  I  never  have  experienced  so  much  joy  in  my  heart 
as  these  days.  I  tell  you,  Mrs.  Boutell  and  my  Christian 
friends  in  Evanston,  that  it  is  a  joyful  thing  to  work  hard 
for  Christ,  as  you  clearly  know. 

He  added  a  schedule  of  the  church  services,  show- 
ing preaching,  Bible  classes  or  prayer  meetings  every 
day  but  Tuesday  and  Saturday.  His  letters  show  how 
unceasing  he  and  his  people  were  in  their  efforts  to 
win  others  to  Christ: 

Our  church  members  are  all  active  preachers,  men  as  well 
as  women,  and  have  their  own  places  to  preach  regularly. 
I  have  preaching  or  instructing  services  every  day  except 
Saturday,  on  which  I  prepare  for  Sunday  services.  I  am 
quite  busy  in  my  works,  but  they  are  not  heavy  to  carry  on. 
Christ's  burden  is  light  and  his  yoke  is  easy. 

Self-support  an^.  self-government  are  simple  mat- 
ters in  a  church  which  has  such  a  real  rehgious  faith 
and  Hfe  as  this.     It  is  said  that  in  some  fields,  like 

["7] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

India,  the  people  are  ignorant  and  poor  and  that  we 
must  not  expect  very  much  of  them,  and  must  have 
patience  to  wait  for  the  slow  development  of  Chris- 
tian grace  and  strength.  But  apart  from  the  village 
outcasts  are  the  people  so  inferior  to  the  Japanese, 
and  does  not  the  history  of  Moslem  progress  in 
India  and  China  and  Africa  show  that  self-propaga- 
tion and  the  local  maintenance  of  new  religious  insti- 
tutions are  entirely  practicable? 

In  a  list  of  Indian  (Mohammedan)  missionaries  published 
in  the  journal  of  a  religious  and  philanthropic  society  of 
Lahore  we  find  the  names  of  schoolmasters,  government 
clerks  in  the  Canal  and  Opium  Departments,  traders,  includ- 
ing a  dealer  in  camel  carts,  an  editor  of  a  newspaper,  a  book- 
binder and  a  workman  in  a  printing  establishment.  These 
men  devote  the  hours  of  leisure  left  them  after  the  comple- 
tion of  the  day's  labor  to  the  preaching  of  their  religion 
in  the  streets  and  bazaars  of  Indian  cities,  seeking  to  win 
converts  from  among  Christians  and  Hindus,  whose  religious 
belief  they  controvert  and  attack.^ 

It  may  be  said  that  Christianity  is  ethically  more 
exacting  and  spiritually  more  refined  than  any  other 
reHgion,  but  to  admit  that  other  religions  can  propa- 
gate themselves  indigenously  and  maintain  themselves 
in  living  power  without  foreign  aid  is  to  relinquish 
Christianity's  claim  to  an  actual  superiority.  Have 
they  Hfe  and  power  and  adaptiveness  which  it  lacks? 
Not  if  we  are  to  accept  the  plain  evidence  of  Sawa- 
yama's  work.  Day  by  day  his  church  grew,  as  he 
and  his  people  went  about  preaching  Christ.  The 
same  result  would  follow  the  same  spirit  in  America 

» Arnold,  "The  Preaching  of  Islam,"  p.  333. 

[1,8] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

and  everywhere,  without  secular  inducements  or 
social  reconstruction  of  the  message  or  institutional 
equipments  or  any  other  device,  all  good  enough  in 
themselves  and  necessary  as  the  fruitage  of  Chris- 
tianity, but  no  substitute  for  the  old  evangelical 
story,  and  ineffective  for  church  building  in  com- 
parison with  it. 


["9] 


Ill 

So  Sawayama  solved  the  problem  of  self-propaga- 
tion, and  solved  it,  too,  at  the  only  time  when  it  can 
be  solved,  that  is,  at  the  outset.  It  was  put  into 
the  Korean  Church  at  the  beginning  and  is  there  now 
just  because  it  was  put  in  at  the  start.  If  Christians 
begin  by  having  all  their  expenses  met  by  others 
and  all  their  preaching  paid  for  by  others,  they  will 
continue  and  end  so.  When  they  begin  as  Korea 
and  Uganda  began,  a  church  is  created  which  is  a 
demonstration  that  Christianity  is  not  inferior  to 
other  religions  in  self-propagating  power.  Dr.  Moffett 
sets  this  forth  in  a  striking  paper  on  "Policy  and  Meth- 
ods in  Evangelization  of  Korea,''  read  at  the  con- 
ference in  1904  in  celebration  of  the  twentieth  anni- 
versary of  the  beginning  of  Protestant  mission  work 
in  that  country: 

The  infusion  of  an  enthusiastic  evangelistic  spirit  into  the 
first  converts  and  continuously  into  the  whole  church — the 
importance  of  this  can  scarcely  be  exaggerated,  and  it  is  worth 
our  while  to  plan  wisely  to  develop  this  and  to  avoid  the 
development  of  the  opposite  spirit  of  service  where  merce- 
nary motives  develop  apparent  evangelistic  zeal.  For  this 
reason  the  employment  of  men  and  women  to  preach  in  the 
early  stages  of  work  and  the  use  of  much  money  in  initiating 
work  of  any  kind  is  to  be  deprecated;  for  thereby  people  are 
attracted  by  an  unintentional  appeal  to  mercenary  motives 
to  make  profession  of  Christianity.  The  inculcation  and 
development  of  an  overwhelming  desire  to  make  known  to 
others  the  message  of  salvation  which  brings  peace  and  joy 
with  the  sense  of  forgiveness  and  reconciliation  with  God, 

[120] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

simply  from  an  experience  of  the  same  in  one's  own  heart, 
will  do  more  than  any  other  one  thing  for  the  widespread 
evangelization  of  Korea.  When  this  spirit  of  voluntary, 
joyful,  enthusiastic  propagation  of  the  truth  has  become  char- 
acteristic of  the  early  converts  and  the  church,  the  employ- 
ment of  men  proportionately  with  the  development  of  the 
church  will  not  be  a  hindrance  but  a  help  to  evangelization. 
I  am  satisfied,  however,  that  this  spirit  can  be  secured  only 
through  the  deep  convictions  of  the  missionary,  working  out 
in  his  own  life  this  same  enthusiastic  evangelistic  spirit,  so 
that  by  example,  rather  than  by  exhortation,  he  infuses  this 
spirit  into  the  first  converts  who  come  into  closest  contact 
with  him,  reading  and  knowing  his  inner  real  self  most  clearly. 
Real  enthusiasm  begets  enthusiasm;  conviction  begets  con- 
viction. A  man  all  on  fire  with  and  dominated  by  this  spirit 
is  a  tremendous  power,  and  the  cumulative  force  of  a  whole 
church  of  such  men  is  more  irresistible  than  an  avalanche. 
A  church  constantly  at  work  seeking  to  convert  men — ped- 
dlers carrying  books  and  preaching  as  they  sell  their  wares, 
merchants  and  innkeepers  talking  to  customers  and  guests, 
travelers,  along  the  roads  and  on  the  ferries  telling  of  Jesus 
and  his  salvation,  women  going  to  the  fields,  drawing  water 
at  the  well,  washing  clothes  at  the  brooks  or  visiting  in 
heathen  homes,  all  talking  of  the  gospel  and  what  it  has  done 
for  them — is  a  method  of  evangelization  than  which  none  is 
more  powerful.  To  Yi  Yeng  En — now  with  the  Lord — I 
ascribe  the  greatest  influence  in  the  development  of  this 
spirit  in  our  northern  work.  He  never  allowed  a  man  to  pass 
the  examination  for  admission  to  the  catechumenate  or  the 
church  without  impressing  upon  him  this  as  his  first  duty  and 
privilege  as  a  Christian.  From  him  came  the  practice  of 
questioning  the  advisability  of  admitting  to  the  church  any- 
one who  had  not  first  made  known  to  his  family  and  neighbors 
what  great  things  the  Lord  had  done  for  him.  I  do  not  hesi- 
tate to  place  this  as  the  foremost  factor  in  the  widespread 
development  of  our  work  in  northern  Korea. 

I  ask  again  what  evidence  there  is  that  Christianity 

[I2l] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

is  incapable  of  doing  in  India  or  China,  in  the  people 
whom  it  reaches,  the  same  work  which  it  has  done 
in  Korea  and  Japan? 

The  methods  which  Sawayama  used  in  his  pastoral 
work  and  the  message  which  he  preached  were,  as  I 
have  said,  unquaHfiedly  evangehcal  and  Pauline. 
He  was  very  careful  about  his  foundations.  He 
writes: 

We  received  several  applications  to  join  our  church,  but 
we  do  not  hasten  to  receive  them,  as  we  must  examine  them 
thoroughly,  so  that  we  may,  as  far  as  our  human  mind  can 
judge,  although  we  cannot  say  that  we  proved  the  depth  of 
the  heart,  prove  that  they  are  true  Christians  and  are  wiUing 
to  sacrifice  all  things  for  Christ's  sake,  even  their  own  lives 
if  it  is  necessary.  Some  of  the  appHcants  were  most  bigoted 
Buddhists.  They  are  working  now  among  their  former 
religious  friends;  I  hope  they  will  lead  many  of  those  who 
are  in  the  darkness  into  the  light  of  the  Christian  religion. 

His  requirements  were  sternly  Puritanic  in  some 
matters: 

One  who  received  baptism  lately  in  my  church  was  a 
doctor  who  is  about  sixty  years  old.  He  was  a  most  bigoted 
Buddhist.  When  we  examined  him  it  was  satisfactory  in 
every  matter,  and  when  we  asked  him  if  he  would  give  up 
anything  which  does  not  honor  Christ  and  does  not  make 
him  a  useful  man,  even  if  the  thing  may  not  be  bad  or  wicked, 
he  said  he  would.  Then  we  asked  him  to  give  up  his  smok- 
ing, which  is  not  for  any  honor  for  Christ,  though  we  do  not 
say  that  those  who  smoke  are  not  true  Christians.  He  said 
that  he  was  willing  to  give  it  up.  Few  days  after  he  sent  word 
that  we  should  wait  his  baptism  till  next  time  on  account  of 
that  he  cannot  yet  give  up  his  smoking.  Then  I  went  to  see 
him  and  I  noticed  that  he  was  reading  the  Bible  and  praying 

[122] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

and  fasting.  He  told  me  that  he  had  been  smoking  day  and 
night  during  these  forty  years,  therefore  it  is  very  hard  for 
him  to  give  it  up.  But  he  said  that  he  is  willing  to  give  up 
even  his  Hfe  for  Christ's  sake,  if  it  need  be.  Why  cannot 
smoking  be  given  up?  Because  he  thinks  his  faith  is  not  yet 
strong,  so  he  will  pray  God  to  give  strong  faith  to  overcome 
these  habits;  and  that  time  we  kneeled  and  prayed  together, 
and  few  days  after  that  he  succeeded  to  give  it  up  entirely. 

This  doctor  led  an  old  couple,  who  were  also  strong  Budd- 
hists. Since  they  gave  up  associating  with  their  former 
friends  the  former  friends  with  priests  came  to  their  house 
many  times  to  try  to  lead  them  back  to  the  former  faith, 
but  they  told  them  that  this  is  the  true  way,  so  they  had 
better  come  to  hear  about  the  way.  They  brought  the  priest 
to  our  church  and  they  are  now  trying  to  lead  Buddhists 
to  hear  the  gospel  of  Christ.  .  .  . 

One  young  man  decided  to  be  a  minister,  but  his  cousin 
tried  to  persuade  him  to  become  an  officer.  But  if  he  should 
become  an  officer  he  cannot  sometimes  keep  the  Sabbath. 
So  he  told  his  cousin  that  he  preferred  rather  to  be  a  slave  to 
keep  God's  holy  law  than  to  become  an  officer  to  break  it; 
so  he  was  obliged  to  depart  from  him  immediately.  He  came 
here  last  Saturday  and  is  waiting  for  baptism.  His  faith  is 
increasing  greatly. 

Many  will  condemn  such  severity,  but  it  produced 
a  pure  and  eager  and  united  church  filled  with  a 
"spirit  of  broad  sympathy  and  love,"  and  with  no 
division  in  it.  No  heresy  troubled  it,  either.  The 
church  is  like  the  gyroscope.  It  wabbles  only  when 
its  speed  declines.  Strict  though  the  church  was,  it 
naturally  gave  a  warm  welcome  to  little  children. 
The  more  choice  its  atmosphere,  the  safer  the  little 
children  were  in  its  fold. 

Sawayama's  message  was  also  evangelical.  He  and 
his  people  sought  to  convert  Buddhists.    They  did 

[123] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

not  take  the  attitude  of  the  "Concordia  Movement'^ 
in  Japan,  which  began  with  the  declaration: 

The  Concordia  Movement  is  founded  upon  the  belief,  first, 
that  different  ethical  teachings,  though  conflicting  in  minor 
points,  are  similar  to  one  another  in  essential  points,  such  as 
seeking  after  Truth  and  higher  spiritual  life;  secondly,  that 
though  mankind  is  divided  into  different  races,  still  there  is 
a  common  ground  upon  which  each  race  can  understand  and 
sympathize  with  the  characteristics  of  others;  thirdly,  though 
the  nations  of  to-day  seem  to  have  conflicting  interests  on 
various  problems,  they  can  find,  if  they  try  and  thoroughly 
understand  one  another,  a  way  by  which  each  nation  might 
promote  its  welfare  and  prosperity  without  coming  to  actual 
clash  with  others.  The  movement  is  an  attempt  to  discover 
and  promote  the  point  of  concord  between  different  religions, 
different  races  and  different  nations. 

Sawayama  did  not  believe  this.  Mr.  Naruse,  who  is 
now  promoting  the  "Concordia  Movement,"  told  me 
so.  Sawayama  was  not  seeking  truth  from  Buddha. 
He  was  offering  men  truth  from  Christ. 

He  was  as  direct  in  his  attitude  to  unconverted 
people  in  the  church  as  to  those  without. 

When  I  was  at  Arima  two  deacons  of  Sanda  church  came 
to  me  and  asked  me  to  preach  there.  I  asked  about  the 
condition  of  the  church,  and  they  said  that  the  work  of  God 
was  decHning  and  all  Christians  were  sleeping.  I  went  there 
last  Friday  and  I  preached  that  night.  Next  morning  the 
acting  pastor  called  on  me  and  asked  me  to  preach  to  un- 
christians  from  that  day.  The  reason  why  he  expressed 
such  a  desire  was  that  the  sermon  which  I  preached  reflected 
very  severely  upon  them.  Therefore  they  wanted  me  to 
preach  to  unchristians,  as  they  had  some  feehng  against 
the  truth.  I  answered  that  I  preach  the  truths  of  the 
Bible;  and  I  think  the  sermons  must  be  impressive  to  Chris- 


PAUL  SAVVAYAMA 

tians  as  well  as  to  unchristians.  Therefore  I  cannot  preach 
such  a  sermon  as  to  make  an  impression  only  on  unchris- 
tians. If  unchristians  read  the  Bible,  they  will  fear  and 
repent,  and  if  Christians  study  it,  they  will  advance  in  their 
virtues.  And  I  explained  to  him  about  the  true  preaching. 
Then  he  was  impressed  and  confessed  the  convictions  which 
he  had  had  since  he  heard  my  first  sermon.  And  he  con- 
fessed his  selfishness  and  sins,  and  he  said  he  is  unworthy 
not  only  to  be  acting  pastor  but  to  be  a  church  member. 
Therefore  he  wished  to  resign  his  pastorship  and  member- 
ship, and  he  would  join  the  church  again  after  his  true  con- 
version; and  he  shed  many  tears.  Then  the  deacons  re- 
pented with  tears,  and  ladies  also  confessed  their  sins  and 
surrendered  all  things  to  God.  I  preached  and  held  prayer 
meetings  during  a  week,  and  many  were  converted. 

Sawayama  always  used  the  simple  New  Testament 
language,  without  any  twist  or  abrasion  or  dilution. 
He  sought  to  imitate  Paul,  and  he  found  the  method 
and  the  message  as  effective  as  Paul  had  found  it  in 
his  day.  He  was  quiet  and  direct,  evasive  of  praise, 
strongly  evangehstic,  but  most  simple,  and  calm  and 
kindly.  His  Hfe  shows  that  the  common  phrases 
about  the  separation  of  East  and  West,  and  the 
dissimilarity  of  the  Oriental  and  the  Western  races 
which  divides  them  by  a  chasm  of  mystery,  are 
fictitious.  As  God  is  one  and  sin  is  one,  man's 
nature  is  the  same  in  all  lands  and  the  one  gospel  is 
its  only  need. 

Sawayama's  faith  opened  to  him  that  rich  world 
in  which,  through  prayer  and  love,  men  recover  a 
joyful  confidence  in  the  absolute  Power  of  the  abso- 
lute Love  and  in  "the  liberty  of  that  Love  to  help 
them."     Mr.  Naruse  tells  us  what  we  could  have 

[1^5] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

known  without  a  word  of  assurance,  that  '^he  was  a 
man  of  prayer  and  devotion.  He  believed  that  every- 
thing in  God's  providence  was  working  to  perform 
the  will  of  God.  He  prayed  with  a  simple  faith. 
Almost  childlike  in  his  trust,  he  seemed  never  to 
doubt  that  his  prayer  would  be  fulfilled."  Mr. 
Miyagawa  tells  us: 

When  he  departed  from  us  we  found  a  list  of  the  names  of 
his  church  members,  by  which  he  used  to  pray  to  our  Father 
for  individual  members  every  morning  and  evening,  some- 
times shedding  bloody  tears.  This  hst  must  have  been  kept 
for  many  years,  because  it  was  stained  with  his  much  han- 
dling. In  some  parts  the  letters  were  indiscernible,  it  was  so 
black.  I  thought,  his  much-used  list  is  a  monument  telling 
of  his  appeal  to  the  Father  for  every  member  of  his  church  by 
name.  From  this  also  I  received  the  answer  to  all  my  ques- 
tions concerning  him,  that  the  secret  of  his  success  was  in 
prayer. 

To  such  faith  before  he  died  was  given  the  joy 
of  seeing  the  conversion  of  his  parents,  who  had  been 
at  first  filled  with  shame  at  his  course,  and  also  of  his 
whole  family.  By  such  faith  he  inspired  the  church 
throughout  Japan  to  beUeve  that  nothing  was  im- 
possible to  men  who  beHeved  in  God.  He  not  only 
founded  the  first  self-supporting  church,  but  also 
inspired  the  first  Japanese  home  missionary  society, 
which  he  wished  to  have  supported  wholly  by  the 
Japanese  churches,  but  which  for  many  years  drew  a 
subvention  from  the  American  Board.  He  also 
opened  the  first  self-supporting  school  for  girls. 
*'The  school  was  modeled  in  some  respects  after 
Mount  Holyoke  Seminary.     It  was  animated  by  the 

[126] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

same  spirit  of  independence,  economy,  perseverance 
and  service  for  others.  So  the  pupils  cooked,  swept, 
washed  and  took  care  of  the  schoohooms  and  the 
gardens.  For  many  years  no  servant  was  employed." 
The  school  grew,  but  not  without  sacrifice  and  strug- 
gles, and  Dr.  De  Forest  declares  that  ''the  evolution  of 
woman's  education  in  Japan,  so  far  as  it  is  based  on 
the  innate  dignity  and  worth  of  woman  as  taught  in 
Christianity,  has  its  source  in  the  sacrificing  work  of 
this  young  man  of  Pauline  faith,  Mr.  Sawayama." 
There  was  still  great  prejudice  against  woman's 
education,  and  what  Sawayama  did,  which  is  now  done 
in  hundreds  of  schools,  was  pioneer  work  in  the  as- 
sertion of  woman's  place  in  society. 

The  blazing  light  of  his  unresting  life  burned  him 
away.  Him,  also,  the  zeal  of  his  Father's  house  con- 
sumed. Soon  after  he  returned  to  Japan  he  dis- 
covered that  he  had  tuberculosis  and  that  his  years, 
and  even  his  days,  were  numbered.  A  bad  cough 
clung  to  him  and  his  strength  was  unequal  to  what  he 
laid  upon  it.  For  ten  years  he  scarcely  had  a  com- 
fortable day.  Constant  headaches  and  fever  wore 
him  down.     In  1878  he  wrote: 

I  am  also  not  well  all  the  time.  I  have  more  or  less  fever, 
headache,  cough  and  so  general  feebleness  in  my  entire  body. 
Yet  I  am  very  thankful  that  I  believe  that  "all  things  work 
together  for  good  to  them  that  love  God,  to  them  who  are 
the  called  according  to  his  purpose,"  and  am  able  to  say,  in 
whatever  condition  I  may  be,  "All  well,  Lord!" 

Mr.  Naruse  says  that  once,  when  his  wife  was  sick 
with  a  severe  hemorrhage  of  the  lungs  and  a  very 
high  fever, 

[127] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Mr.  Sawayama  could  not  sleep  or  even  lie  down  for  seven 
days  and  nights,  so  severe  was  his  pain;  during  all  this  time 
he  remained  almost  motionless  upon  the  floor,  in  a  position 
which  I  can  scarcely  describe  so  as  to  make  the  reader  see  it. 
But  as  nearly  as  I  can  describe  it  it  was  this:  he  kneeled, 
bringing  his  hips  close  down  to  his  ankles,  then  threw  his 
body  forward  upon  the  floor,  resting  it  upon  his  elbows,  which 
were  drawn  back  under  his  chest,  and  supporting  his  head 
with  his  hands.  I  was  taking  care  of  him  and  his  sick  wife 
as  best  I  could.  I  often  offered  to  rub  his  muscles  so  as  to 
relieve  him  somewhat,  but  he  would  not  allow  me  to  remit 
my  care  of  his  wife  for  so  long  a  time.  Remaining  in  this 
position  he  did  not  speak  for  seven  days,  but  waited  calmly 
and  patiently.  As  soon  as  his  distress  began  to  lessen  a 
little  he  smiled  and  said  to  me:  "I  never  prayed  that  the 
Father  would  take  my  soul,  for  it  would  be  a  selfish  prayer. 
I  am  glad  to  stay  in  this  world  and  to  endure  my  pain  as  long 
as  the  Father  wishes."  Then  he  added:  "If  at  any  time 
death  comes,  it  shall  make  no  difference  to  me.  I  will  do 
just  the  same  work  just  before  my  death  as  at  any  other  time." 
He  said  often,  "I  will  die  on  the  battle  field;  I  will  fight  the 
good  fight." 

As  soon  as  he  could  go  out  again  he  was  preaching, 
and  with  more  fervor  than  ever,  literally,  in  his  case, 
^'as  a  dying  man  to  dying  men."  After  these  sermons 
he  would  have  to  take  to  his  bed,  and  once  remained 
unconscious  until  the  following  noon.  Toward  the 
end  he  had  to  lie  on  his  sick  bed  two-thirds  of  the  time 
and  actually  Kved  in  the  hospital,  although  nothing 
could  confine  him  to  it.  He  would  come  forth  to  his 
work  to  return  again  when  his  work  was  done.  It  was 
out  of  much  weakness  that  he  was  made  strong,  and 
he  gloried,  as  the  other  Paul  did,  that  the  power  of 
Christ  could  be  per fe:^ ted  in  his  frailty.    For  all  his 

[128] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

ceaseless  toil   he   paid   literally  in  his  own   heart's 
blood. 

And  yet  it  was  all  done  in  the  best  of  good  cheer. 
He  spoke  of  himself  as  ''the  happiest  man  in  Japan." 
Five  cofiins  were  carried  out  of  his  house  in  five  years. 
He  still  bore  joy  with  him  wherever  he  went.  His 
wife  was  taken  from  him.  Even  in  that  experience 
both  he  and  she  learned  new  lessons  of  God.  Mr. 
Naruse  tells  us: 

A  year  before  her  death  she  began  to  doubt  of  her  salva- 
tion and  feared  to  die.  She  called  her  husband  and  clinging 
to  his  sleeves  cried  bitterly  on  account  of  the  uncertainty  of 
her  salvation.  Mr.  Sawayama,  while  usually  full  of  affection 
and  tender  love  to  her,  on  that  occasion  bravely  forsook  her 
in  the  view  of  her  soul's  welfare,  saying:  "I  am  your  husband, 
but  I  am  not  your  Saviour.  You  have  been  relying  on  me 
more  than  on  Christ.  You  made  a  tremendous  mistake.  I 
love  you,  but  cannot  save  your  soul.  Christ  is  your  Saviour 
and  he  alone.  Call  upon  him  and  seek  your  salvation." 
Then  he  left  her  alone  and  came  downstairs.  She  struggled 
severely,  but  was  finally  driven  to  Christ,  forsaking  all  her 
temporal  reliances  and  surrendering  herself  entirely  to  Jesus. 

The  new  Japanese  eclecticism  is  a  weak  affair  when 
confronted  with  this  tragic  school  of  human  experi- 
ence. "My  family  is  in  the  calamity  of  disease  all 
the  time,"  wrote  Sawayama,  "but  I  am  rejoicing  and 
thanking  day  and  night,  because  I  have  learned  the 
way  of  rejoicing  in  every  trouble."  "Thank  God," 
he  wrote  later,  "I  am  very  successful  in  the  work  which 
my  heavenly  Father  gave  me  to  do  and  am  very 
happy.  This  morning  one  missionary  said  to  me: 
'Good  morning,   Mr.   Sawayama.    You   are  always 

[129] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

bright  and  happy  these  days.'  I  think  it  is  better  to 
be  happy  than  well,  is  it  not?"  The  Devil  tempted 
him  in  the  hospital:  "Paul,  do  you  not  remember  that 
you  were  lying  in  this  hospital  last  December,  too? 
You  have  spent  almost  all  of  your  time  this  year  in 
the  hospital  on  this  sick  bed  and  you  have  not  been 
at  work  for  God,  but  have  only  been  lying  down  here. 
What  do  you  think  of  this  day?"  But  he  thought  with 
gladness  of  his  Saviour  and  rested  in  his  joy.  He 
wrote  a  Httle  poem  in  Japanese  for  his  wife  in  her 
intense  pain: 

Spare  thou  our  lives  or  take  them,  Lord, 
Our  deepest  hearts  at  peace  shall  be, 

Our  earthly  frames  with  glad  accord 
To  all  thy  will,  we  trust  to  thee. 

If,  by  thy  grace,  our  lives  are  spared. 

We'll  serve  thee  through  our  earthly  days, 

We'll  linger  here,  with  souls  prepared 
To  render  thee  eternal  praise. 

If  thou  should'st  call  us  in  our  youth, 
We'll  hasten  through  the  open  gate 

Without  regret,  for  there,  in  truth. 
Thy  many  mansions  for  us  wait. 

The  bitter  pains  and  struggles  sore 

Through  which  our  lives  are  passing  now, 

Thou  knewest  them,  Saviour,  all  before: 
Thou  leadest  us;  to  thee  we  bow. 

For  all  who  strive  to  enter  in 

Thy  heavenly  kingdom,  Master,  God, 

Must  walk  with  anguish  over  sin, 
The  thorny  path  thyself  hast  trod. 
[130] 


PAUL  SAWAYAMA 

He  knew  the  anguish,  but  it  was  always  hidden  by 
him  under  the  glow  of  a  great  joy. 

So  he  came  to  the  end.  Up  to  the  last  he  toiled  at 
his  glad  task.  As  death  approached  he  arranged  for 
the  distribution  of  his  few  possessions.  He  was  never 
small-natured.  His  insistence  on  self-support  was 
not  a  matter  of  petty  organization  with  him,  but  a 
great  and  enlarging  principle.  He  had  never  asked 
people  for  money.  Giving,  he  had  taught,  was  a 
great  privilege  and  joy,  and  his  generous,  thoughtful 
spirit  was  with  him  to  the  end.  He  found  that  the 
cover  of  an  inkstand  which  he  wished  to  give  to  a 
friend  was  lost  and  he  at  once  ordered  a  new  cover  of 
silver.  He  gave  his  Kttle  eight-year-old  daughter  for 
her  last  present  a  gold  ring.    Then  he  fell  asleep. 

A  personality  like  this  is  the  adequate  Christian 
apologetic.  No  religion  but  Christianity  has  ever 
been  able  to  produce  such  men,  so  balanced,  so  devout, 
so  intense,  so  gentle,  so  tragic,  so  genial,  so  vitally 
moral,  with  all  of  Purun  Bhaghat's  isolation  of  spirit 
from  the  world,  but  with  the  whole  of  hfe  and  not 
merely  its  ending  given  to  sacrificial  service  of  man- 
kind, identified  with  their  own  race,  but  in  sjnnpathy 
with  all  that  is  human  and  strong  among  their  own 
people  because  rich  in  the  universal  quahties  of 
manhood.  Buddhism,  Hinduism,  Islam  never  made 
a  character  Hke  this  out  of  an  American  or  any  man 
of  any  race.  It  is  the  glory  of  Christianity  that  it  can 
take  a  Japanese,  and,  emancipating  him  from  the 
racially  separatist  quaHties  of  his  nature,  make  him  a 
more  powerful  Japanese  than  ever  by  reason  of  the 
cosmopoHtanism    of    his    new    Christian    manhood. 

[131] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Christianity  alone  can  make  a  man  a  better  man  for 
each  place  by  annuHng  his  locahsm  and  qualifying  him 
anew  for  his  local  work  by  the  inspiration  and  power 
of  the  universal  stamp  it  puts  upon  him. 

Sawayama  teaches  us  this  lesson.  And  thank  God 
he  teaches  us  also  that  time  and  criticism  do  not 
change  the  principles  of  the  gospel,  that  what  it  was 
and  did  nineteen  centuries  ago  in  Philippi  and  Antioch 
and  Rome  it  can  do  to-day  in  Japan.  It  can  make 
men  who  are  masters  of  Hfe  and  death,  and  found 
churches  which  from  the  hour  of  their  founding  are 
ahve  and  free. 


[132] 


STUDY  FOUR 


[133] 


Padre  Nehemiah  Goreh 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

AND  THE  RELATION  OF  WESTERN  FORMS  OF 
CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE  TO  THE  INDIAN 
MIND 

I 

A  MODERN  student  of  world  politics  and  intellectual 
movements,  whose  judgments  are  unusually  accurate 
and  just,  says,  ^'Nothing  has  set  up  a  more  impassable 
barrier  between  the  peoples  of  the  East  and  the  West 
than  the  profound  discrepancy  between  Christian 
profession  and  practice.  The  deceitful  selfishness, 
the  rapacity  and  bloodshed,  with  which  Christian 
nations  have  estabhshed  their  power  in  the  Orient, 
the  viciousness  of  the  ear  Her  adventurers  and  traders, 
have  thoroughly  alienated  sympathy  and  destroyed 
confidence.  When,  after  the  revolting  record  of 
the  Chinese  War,  the  Western  nations  offer  them- 
selves as  moral  exhorters,  the  cultured  Oriental  is 
tempted  to  smile  at  the  incongruity.  But  the  dis- 
illusionment which  is  thus  created  has  its  tragic  side, 
too.  How  pathetic  is  the  High  ted  hope  and  utter 
despair  of  an  ardent  convert  like  Nilakantha  Goreh 
whose  high  expectations  of  Christian  life  are  disap- 
pointed! After  cutting  loose  from  his  earlier  behefs, 
and  thereby  bringing  deep  sorrow  on  all  his  beloved 
ones,  this  young  Indian  scholar  came  to  England  to 
Hve  in  that  atmosphere  of  love  and  purity  whose  ideal 

[135] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

simplicity  had  attracted  his  soul  after  he  had  fought 
his  way  through  all  the  systems  of  Indian  philosophy. 
But  after  six  weeks  in  London  he  came  to  his  Oxford 
mentor  with  the  sorrowful  words,  'If  what  I  have 
seen  in  London  is  Christianity,  I  am  no  longer  a 
Christian.'  His  noble  and  brilHant  intellect  was  ul- 
timately wrecked  through  his  great  disillusionment."^ 
There  is,  indeed,  a  great  problem  for  the  new  Chris- 
tians of  the  East  in  the  enforced  readjustment  of  their 
thought,  when  they  discover  that  Christian  nations 
are  so  far  from  the  kingdom  of  God  and  that  so  few 
Christian  men  are  of  the  moral  quality  of  the  mission- 
aries through  whom  the  gospel  came  to  them.  There 
is  no  more  picturesque  account  of  the  process  of  this 
readjustment  than  Uchimura's  diary,  "How  I  Be- 
came a  Christian."  His  story  covers  a  very  much 
larger  problem  than  that  involved  in  the  discovery 
that  Christian  civilization  is  so  unchristian.  It  is 
the  story  of  his  whole  intellectual  reconstruction,  the 
passage  of  a  mind  from  Japanese  Confucianism  through 
various  types  of  Christian  experience  into  a  definite 
and  ultraindividualistic  view  of  his  own.  But  the 
process  did  not  wreck  Uchimura's  intellect.  He  had 
far  too  tough  an  intellect  to  be  wrecked  by  strong 
exercise.  And  Goreh's  noble  mind,  far  more  subtle 
and  tender  than  that  of  the  Japanese,  was  not  wrecked 
by  his  readjustment.  Indeed,  it  is  not  accurate  to 
describe  his  experience  in  England  as  a  disillusion- 
ment. He  was  keenly  disappointed,  but  he  had  seen 
much  unchristian  Christianity  in  India,  and  his 
broad  perceptions  were  entirely  capable  of  making 

»Reinsch,  "Intellectual  and  Political  Currents  in  the  Far  East,"  p.  lo  f. 

[•36] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

right  distinctions  as  he  observed  the  life  of  Great 
Britain.  His  real  problem  was  not  this,  but  the  vastly 
more  difficult  and  interesting  problem  of  thinking 
out  Christian  theology  in  the  forms  of  the  Indian 
mind,  of  discovering  the  devotional  life  in  which 
Christianity  could  best  meet  the  needs  of  the  Indian 
spirit  and  of  constructing  the  Christian  apologetic 
which  would  carry  to  other  Indian  consciences  the 
conviction  it  had  carried  to  his  own.  In  the  effort 
to  solve  this  problem  Goreh  passed  over  weary  ways 
alone,  and  he  lamented  at  the  end  that  God  had  de- 
nied him  joy.  But  God  gave  him  great  peace  and  he 
was  never  near  the  shipwreck  of  which  Professor 
Reinsch  speaks. 

We  have  studied  in  Sawayama  the  struggle  of  an 
Asiatic  Christian  to  realize  the  ideal  of  a  true  and 
hving  Church.  In  Goreh  we  shall  not  see  much  of 
this  problem.  The  ideals  which  consumed  Sawayama 
did  not  shine  for  him.  They  have  never  shone  for 
Indian  Christians.  Either  because  of  their  age-long 
habit  of  submission  to  aUen  masters,  or  because  of 
the  taming  inertia  of  their  chmate,  or  because  of  the 
paralyzing  influence  of  the  British  poHtical  system 
upon  all  native  initiative  and  responsibiHty,  or  because 
of  the  system  on  which  mission  work  was  started  at 
the  beginning,  or  because  of  the  depression  of  poverty 
and  the  bondage  of  caste,  most  of  the  Indian  churches 
have  always  Hved  in  the  acceptance  of  the  idea  of 
dependence,  at  least  of  financial  dependence.  Goreh 
sought  to  preserve  a  self-respecting  personal  inde- 
pendence, but  he  never  thought  Sawayama's  thoughts 
of  a  purely  indigenous,  free  and  self-organized  Christian 

[137] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

church.  He  was  an  Indian  and  not  a  Japanese. 
What  we  shall  see  in  him  is  the  effort  at  an  Indian 
Christian  philosophy,  a  great  Indian  mind  wrestling 
with  the  problem  of  Christian  thought  and  experi- 
ence under  the  influence  of  high  ecclesiastical  ideas, 
and  in  an  environment  of  sacramental  conceptions 
seeking  to  satisfy  his  own  Indian  spirit  and  work  out 
the  problem  of  the  right  Christian  message  and  method 
for  his  Indian  countrymen. 

Goreh  wrought  at  this  during  a  long  and  holy  life, 
seeking  to  orient  his  own  spirit  in  the  theology  of  the 
Christian  Church  and  to  mediate  to  India  what  the 
West  had  learned  of  Christianity,  in  order  that  the 
truth  of  Christianity,  which  is  neither  Western  nor 
Eastern,  might  be  naturalized  in  Indian  soil. 

Nilakantha  Sastri  Goreh — for  this  was  his  name 
until  he  took  the  name  of  Nehemiah — was  born  in 
Kashipura  in  Bundelkhand  on  February  8,  1825. 
He  was  a  Brahman  of  the  Brahmans.  His  family 
came  from  the  Konkan,  which  is  counted  the  district 
of  the  most  clever  of  all  Brahmans.  He  was  a  Brah- 
man not  only  by  ancestry,  but  also  by  religion  and 
conviction,  thoroughly  conservative  and  orthodox. 
His  name,  Nilakantha,  is  one  of  the  names  of  Krishna, 
the  most  popular  form  of  Vishnu.  He  was  never 
drawn  into  any  of  the  reform  parties  or  halfway 
movements,  and  even  after  he  became  a  Christian  he 
had  far  more  sympathy  with  the  strict  Hindus  than 
with  the  compromisers.  He  knew  Hinduism  by  full 
experience,  both  as  a  social  system  and  as  a  theology. 
He  once  said:  ''I  was  never  like  the  Brahmans  who 
belong  to  the  Prarthana  Samaj.     I  loved  my  religion 

[■38] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

and  believed  in  it  fully.  My  father  had  us  very  care- 
fully instructed  in  the  Sastras,  that  is,  the  philosoph- 
ical writings  of  the  Hindus,  and  I  grew  up  to  love 
them  with  a  great  spiritual  dehght.  They  were  the 
joy  of  my  life."  He  never  entertained,  accordingly, 
any  delusion  as  to  the  real  nature  of  caste.  He  al- 
ways opposed  caste  and  took  pleasure  in  trying  to 
break  it  down  as  antisocial  and  antichristian. 

Goreh's  home  from  his  first  year  was  in  Benares, 
the  holy  city.  Here  he  grew  up  in  the  most  scrupu- 
lous and  earnest  observance  of  Hinduism. 

He  was  not  satisfied  with  freedom  from  ceremom'al  defile- 
ment, which  is  the  Brahmanical  idea  of  sin.  He  was  marked 
out  for  a  Christian  by  the  providence  of  God  while  the 
thought  of  such  a  step  would  have  been  a  horror  to  him.  It 
pained  him  to  hear  of  inconsistencies  in  the  life  of  those  who 
were  looked  up  to  as  pious  Brahmans,  and  he  had  extreme 
reverence  for  such  as  really  carried  into  practice  what  they 
taught  concerning  the  benefit  of  contemplating  the  Supreme, 
and  leading  lives  of  purity,  truthfulness  and  honesty;  indeed, 
it  may  be  said  that  he  ran  after  saints  and  sages.^ 

His  father  was  devout  and  strictly  orthodox,  but 
not  bigoted,  and  his  influence  was  very  great  over 
his  son.  When  the  son  broke  away  from  Hinduism, 
it  was  not  from  him  but  from  a  worldly  uncle  that  he 
encountered  the  greatest  opposition.  At  first  Nila- 
kantha  was  a  worshiper  of  Siva,  after  the  example 
of  his  old  grandfather,  but  he  says: 

I  changed  Siva  for  Vishnu  afterwards.  It  is  curious  that 
one    great    pundit,   from    my   criticizing  on   the   character 

1  The  quotations  unless  otherwise  indicated  are  from  Gardner's  "Life  of 
Nehemiah  Goreh." 

[■39] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

ascribed  to  Siva  in  Hindu  books,  prophesied  that  I  would 
one  day  become  a  Christian,  though  at  that  time  such  an 
idea  never  entered  into  my  mind. 

Indeed,  this  first  change  in  his  religious  opin- 
ions did  not  in  the  least  affect  the  contempt  and 
hatred  which  he  felt  for  Christianity  and  did  not 
disguise.  More  than  this  even;  his  more  active 
rehgious  thinking  led  him  to  conceive  the  idea  of 
arguing  with  the  missionaries  and  silencing  their 
foolish  preaching.  His  newly  adopted  god,  Vishnu, 
had  in  times  long  past  driven  the  Buddhists  from  the 
field.  Hinduism  was  facing  yet  more  formidable 
foes.  Conscious  of  his  powers  and  assured  of  the 
truth  of  his  course,  Nilakantha,  with  keen  and  subtle 
argument,  a  tranquil  and  gentle  spirit,  and  ample 
scholarship,  opened  a  discussion  with  a  missionary 
of  the  Church  Missionary  Society  in  Benares  on  the 
supreme  problem  of  Hindu  religious  speculation,  the 
problem  of  Karma;  addressing  "a  question  from 
Nilakantha  to  Rev.  William  Smith,  concerning  human 
misery  and  man's  being  in  a  state  of  probation." 
Goreh  later  told  the  story  of  this  discussion: 

I  heard  that  the  C.  M.  S.  missionary  was  a  man  of  great 
piety,  and  the  fooHsh  thought  came  to  my  mind  that  I  would 
go  to  him,  and  show  him  the  great  beauty  of  the  Hindu  relig- 
ion and  convert  him.  I  say  "foolish  thought"  now,  but  it 
was  then  to  me  an  inspiration,  and  I  believed  it  was  from  the 
gods,  and  so  did  my  father.  I  went  to  see  Mr.  Smith,  and 
came  away  greatly  disappointed,  for  he  would  not  argue. 
He  asked  me  to  read  the  New  Testament,  and  offered  me  a 
copy.  I  wished  to  refuse  it,  but  he  offered  it  so  courteously 
that,  though  I  felt  a  contempt  for  him  and  his  book,  I  could 
not  refuse  to  take  it.     I  did  not  read  it.     I  went  again  and 

[140] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

again  to  see  Mr.  Smith,  but  he  would  not  argue.  He  only 
asked  me,  "Have  you  read  my  book?" — which  I  never 
answered. 

One  day  I  answered  him  thus,  "You  won't  read  my 
Sastras,  and  yet  you  want  me  to  read  your  Bible."  He 
answered  very  quietly,  "My  young  friend,  I  do  not  know 
Sanskrit,  and  so  cannot  read  your  Sastras,  but  you  know 
English  and  can  do  as  I  advise  you,  and  read  my  Bible." 
I  tried  to  persuade  him  to  let  me  translate  the  Sastras,  but 
it  was  always  the  same  answer.  He  had  no  time.  I  do  not 
know  when  I  began  to  read  the  Bible,  but  it  lay  by  for  a 
long  time;  but  I  continually  went  to  see  Mr.  Smith. 

Mr.  Smith  did  not  try  to  evade  his  questions.  He 
sought  patiently  to  answer  his  alleged  difficulties, 
and  in  doing  so  he  spoke  out  his  Christian  message 
unflinchingly  and  uncompromisingly.  He  did  not 
in  the  least  seek  to  win  Goreh  by  glossing  over  or 
minimizing  the  differences  between  Christianity  and 
Hinduism.  He  spoke  no  word  of  abuse  of  Goreh's 
faith,  but  he  set  forth  with  positive  conviction  the 
Christian  view  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  with  unwavering 
personal  assurance  the  work  which  Christ  alone  can 
do  for  men.  He  gave  Goreh  a  book  by  John  Muir 
which  sketched  the  argument  for  Christianity  and 
against  Hinduism  in  Sanskrit  verse.  For  about 
eleven  months  after  this  he  heard  no  more  of  Goreh, 
but  the  young  disputant  had  been  confronted  with 
the  Christian  Scriptures  and  he  could  not  escape 
from  them.  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  struck  him 
deep,  and  the  more  he  read  to  refute,  the  more  his 
misgivings  grew  that  this  must  be  a  divine  inspira- 
tion. As  he  himself  said  in  later  years,  speaking  in 
the  third  person: 

[141] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

It  was  no  desire  for  conversion,  but  pride  and  vanity  which 
first  moved  him  to  discuss  the  truth  of  Christianity  with  the 
EngHsh  missionaries.  He  did  so  only  for  the  sake  of  showing 
his  own  knowledge  and  power  in  argument,  to  confute,  as  he 
imagined,  their  doctrine.  While  disputing  with  the  mis- 
sionaries the  good  providence  of  God  led  him  to  look  into  the 
Scriptures,  and  then  it  was,  by  the  power  of  the  Word  of 
God,  the  light  of  truth  entered  his  soul. 

Many  wise  missionaries  have  learned  to  pursue 
Mr.  Smith's  method,  evading  no  difficulty,  toning 
down  no  Christian  claim,  but  leaving  the  inquiring 
or  even  the  disputative  mind  face  to  face  with  the 
Word  of  God. 

After  eleven  months  Goreh  again  appeared  at  Mr. 
Smith's  house.  This  was  in  April,  1845.  He  came 
now  not  to  overthrow  the  missionary,  but  to  get 
light  for  his  own  life.     Mr.  Smith  says: 

^'He  could  not  at  times  conceal  the  fact  that  he 
had  convictions  of  the  truth  of  Christianity  and  of 
the  futility,  to  say  the  least,  of  Hinduism.  He  re- 
newed the  subject  of  human  probation,  and  argued 
with  zeal  and  ability  in  favor  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
transmigration  of  souls." 

But  he  became  more  earnest  and  his  private  prayer 
for  light  increased,  and  in  a  few  months  he  declared 
that 

no  mere  worldly  consideration  would  deter  him  from  becom- 
ing a  Christian;  he  wanted  only  more  satisfactory  evidence 
of  the  truth  of  Christianity,  as  he  had  doubts  equally  about 
his  own  religion  and  that  of  Christ.  ...  It  was  now  becom- 
ing evident  that  he  was  losing  faith  in  his  old  rehgion  in  pro- 
portion as  the  beauty  of  the  new  religion  was  being  mani- 
fested.    After  comparing  his  daily  Brahmanical  rites  with 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

Christian  worship,  he  appeared  to  feel  the  contrast  deeply 
and  evidenced  it  by  many  a  sad  sigh.  He  candidly  ac- 
knowledged that  he  had  now  fewer  doubts  in  regard  to  Chris- 
tianity than  he  had  about  Hinduism.  Mr.  Smith  told  him 
that  that  was  evidence  that  he  should  embrace  Christianity, 
and  God  would  remove  all  doubt.  On  this,  his  usual 
subtilty  again  manifested  itself.  He  said,  "If  my  one  hundred 
doubts,  for  instance,  on  Christianity  may  be  removed,  why 
may  not  my  five  hundred  on  Hinduism?" 


The  pain  of  relinquishing  old  error  was  keener  with 
him  than  the  joy  of  finding  new  truth,  for  the  error 
had  seemed  truth  and  been  long  loved,  and  the  truth 
was  new  and  unfamiliar,  and  it  seemed  to  his  soul, 
so  timid  and  yet  so  loyal,  a  fearful  adventure.  *'The 
dreadfulness  of  eternal  things"  was  a  real  dreadful- 
ness  to  him.  It  was  true  to  the  psychology  of  a 
mind  that  was  reasoning  its  way  into  the  kingdom 
instead  of  coming  in  by  the  leap  of  a  spontaneous 
faith,  that  every  step  of  the  way  should  be  beset 
by  doubts  and  questionings,  balancing  of  evidence, 
turnings  back  to  make  in  the  interest  of  Hinduism 
every  intellectual  suggestion  or  concession  allowed 
to  Christianity.  At  last  to  a  doubt  regarding  the 
Christian  teaching  of  the  future  Hfe  as  contrasted 
with  the  Hindu  doctrine  of  transmigration,  which 
was  seventh  in  a  long  Kst  that  he  submitted,  Mr. 
Smith  replied  with  the  New  Testament  teaching  of 
eternal  punishment.  This  smote  his  conscience  as 
with  the  very  thunder  of  the  Judgment  Day,  and  from 
this  hour  the  issue  was  settled  with  him,  though  his 
racial  and  constitutional  hesitancies  were  still  to  be 
overcome.    His  next  step,  while  he  still  waited  at  the 

[143] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

gate,  was  to  turn  his  arguments  against  Hinduism, 
and  he  opened  discussion  with  some  of  his  friends  and 
began  to  neglect  some  of  the  family  Hindu  observ- 
ances. His  uncle,  who  was  now  head  of  the  home,  re- 
proached him.  His  father,  with  whom  he  had  always 
been  in  spiritual  sympathy,  laughed  at  him  and 
unconsciously  helped  him  on  his  Christian  way  by 
betraying  the  indifference  to  truth  which  pantheism 
engenders.  It  made  Httle  difference,  his  father  told 
him,  whether  Christianity  were  true  or  false.  Where 
everything  is  Maya,  illusion,  of  course  the  mist  of 
uncertainty  settles  over  all  and  reahty  vanishes.  ''So 
the  Hindu  acquiesces  in  the  idea  that  one  religion 
may  be  true  for  others,  while  yet  his  old  religion 
remains  true  for  himself." 

Goreh's  moral  nature  revolted  from  such  intellectual 
degradation.  His  Hindu  friends  also  drove  him  on 
to  Christ.  They  told  him  that  the  Bible  had  cor- 
rupted his  mind  and  that  he  needed  to  return  more 
deeply  into  worship  of  the  Hindu  gods.  He  did  so, 
but  the  mockery  and  futihty  of  such  worship  threw 
him  back  into  the  New  Testament  again,  and  the 
moral  penetration  of  the  Bible  began  to  uncover  to 
him  a  new  idea  of  sin.  But  still  he  wavered.  He 
had  never  been  an  idolater.  He  had  always  wor- 
shiped not  gods  but  God.  Could  he  not  be  a  Hindu 
and  a  Christian  too?  The  crisis  came  fast  upon 
him.  He  was  a  real  seeker  for  the  truth,  and  the 
truth  is  not  only  a  light  in  the  mind,  it  is  also  a  power 
in  the  will.  He  brought  two  other  young  pundits 
to  Mr.  Smith.  But  that  was  easier  than  for  him 
to  come  to  Christ.     Nevertheless,  at  last  he  came. 

[144] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

it  was  a  terrible  ordeal  from  his  old  Hindu  point  of 
view.  ''You  English  people  cannot  imagine  what 
it  is  for  a  Brahman  to  become  a  Christian.  It  is 
very  awful."  The  report  was  circulated  about  him 
"that  he  was  a  man  of  no  character,  and  that,  having 
already  changed  his  religion  from  the  cult  of  Siva  to 
that  of  Vishnu,  his  vacillating  mind  was  now  being 
drawn  away  to  Christ.  The  danger  of  this  tempta- 
tion was  that  it  set  him  to  thinking  whether  there 
might  not  be  some  truth  in  it,  and  that  after  all  he 
might  become  unsteady  in  his  new  religion." 

His  uncle  beat  him.  His  father  wept  and  pleaded 
with  him.  The  young  man  sought  to  settle  himself 
once  more  in  his  old  life,  but  it  was  in  vain.  'T 
could  get  no  peace,"  he  said.  ''The  Hindu  religion 
was  absolutely  abhorrent  to  me,  and  my  whole  soul 
yearned  for  Christ.  So  one  day  I  slipped  away 
quietly,  saying  good-by  to  no  one."  He  was  followed 
to  a  distant  town  and  drugged  and  intimidated,  but 
stood  firm  against  the  storm  of  wrath  that  fell  upon 
him.     Even  yet,  however,  he  was  not  ready. 


He  began  to  express  a  desire  to  try  Hinduism  once  more, 
with  respect,  especially,  to  its  practical  part;  intimating  that, 
should  he  leave  it  now,  it  might  be  said  that  he  had  not  shown 
it  fair  play,  not  having  tried  its  various  remedies  for  sin  and 
means  of  acquiring  divine  knowledge.  The  full  and  perfect 
repetition  of  the  Gayatri — the  most  sacred  of  all  texts — 
to  which  most  extraordinary  blessings  are  promised,  and 
other  holy  texts,  he  was  particularly  anxious  to  test.  .  .  .  He 
wished,  he  said,  to  be  able  to  tell  the  Hindus,  after  he  should 
become  a  Christian,  that  he  had  tried  everything  Hinduism 
could  offer,  and  all  to  no  purpose. 

[•45] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

The  memory  of  his  father  haunted  him.  He  once 
said: 

The  image  of  my  father  seems  to  be  continually  before  me. 
His  last  look,  so  full  of  reproach,  of  sorrow  and  of  agony — 
I  cannot  forget  it.  It  haunts  me  day  and  night,  sleeping 
and  waking.  There  is  my  mourning,  unhappy  father, 
present  to  me.     I  must — I  must  return. 

All  this  is  a  real  life  story.  We  who  glide  into  the 
Christian  faith  so  easily  from  our  childhood  training, 
or  who  come  over  to  it  by  positive  decision  in  a  Chris- 
tian land  where  every  creditable  influence  cooperates 
with  our  decision,  can  have  Httle  idea  of  the  wrench 
involved  in  a  Hindu's  coming  from  pantheism  to  a 
behef  in  a  personal  God,  from  a  society  based  on 
caste  to  the  Christian  idea  of  human  brotherhood,  from 
the  tenacious,  throttling,  enervating  tentacles  of 
Hindu  philosophic  thought  into  the  new  moral  and 
intellectual  world  of  Christianity.  Even  in  India 
apostasy  from  Hinduism  was  far  costHer  and  more 
difficult  then  than  now,  especially  in  Benares.  But 
at  last  Nilakantha  came  to  the  hour  with  strength 
given  him  for  his  need,  and,  though  again  and  again 
he  drew  back,  on  March  14,  1848,  he  was  baptized  as 
Nehemiah  Goreh  at  Jaunpur,  "the  force  of  conviction 
and  the  voice  of  conscience,"  as  he  said,  compelling 
him. 

This  was  the  unpardonable  offense.  He  was  excom- 
municated from  caste  as  a  defiled  man,  henceforth 
dead  to  his  friends.  His  wife  was  lost  to  him  for 
five  years.  His  father  had  told  him  that  if  a  son  of 
his  became  a  Christian  he  was  sure  the  blow  would 

[146] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

kill  him.  For  thirteen  years,  however,  the  father 
survived,  and  he  never  ceased  to  love  and  long  for 
his  son.  Far  from  never  speaking  to  Nilakantha 
again,  as  Professor  Reinsch  says,  the  father  ceased  to 
speak  to  anyone  but  his  son.  He  was  distressed  un- 
less he  saw  him  every  four  or  five  days,  and  when 
Nehemiah  came  the  father  would  give  his  son  of  his 
own  food  to  eat. 

While  he  blamed  him  for  becoming  a  Christian,  he 
used  to  implore  him  never  to  give  it  up  and  become 
a  freethinker  or  an  atheist.  "Without  religion,"  he 
used  to  say,  "man  cannot  exist.  You  have  changed 
yours;  but  still  Christianity  is  a  religion — therefore 
keep  to  it." 

Father  and  son  loved  one  another  to  the  end,  though 
the  father  was  always  seeking,  and  never  found,  and 
could  not  beHeve  that  the  son  had  found  that  which 
they  had  both  sought. 


[■47] 


II 

Nehemiah  had  to  meet  at  once  the  problem  of  his 
daily  bread,  which  is  so  real  in  Hindu  and  Moslem 
societies,  with  their  utter  denial  of  real  human 
brotherhood.  In  his  caste  he  was  within  a  wide  and 
wealthy  family  relationship  which  sheltered  and  fed 
all.  Outcast,  he  was  expelled  from  the  family  Hfe. 
More  religion  and  ethics  than  we  suspect  are  derived 
among  us  from  daily  bread  or  social  environment. 
The  apostasy  which  results  when  American  Chris- 
tians emigrate  is  a  sad  revelation  of  the  extraneous 
character  of  much  of  our  religious  and  moral  opinion. 
If  Christianity  meant  ostracism  and  poverty  we  should 
have  a  great  winnowing  of  our  church  rolls.  It 
meant  both  of  these  to  Nehemiah  Goreh.  But  loss 
of  mere  social  position  was  a  small  matter  to  him. 
It  was  the  utter  and  forcible  destruction  of  his  whole 
social  Hfe  which  in  the  intolerance  and  exclusiveness 
of  Hinduism  followed  his  baptism.  Poverty  was 
nothing  to  him.  His  father  had  voluntarily  chosen 
it  in  the  midst  of  the  affluence  of  the  family.  Goreh 
never  desired  luxury  or  even  comfort.  Shelter  and 
the  simplest  food  and  the  cheapest  raiment  were  all 
he  ever  required.  Even  these  he  was  reluctant  to 
secure  by  serving  as  a  paid  agent  of  a  mission.  He 
was  at  times  employed,  but  only  at  salaries  that  met 
his  mere  physical  necessities,  and  he  avoided  receiv- 
ing any  fixed  salary  and  always  disliked  doing  any 
work  for  Christ  for  a  remuneration.     Much  of  the 

[148] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

time  he  supported  himself  by  Hterary  work,  transla- 
tion and  teaching.  Up  to  the  time  of  his  ordination 
in  1868  his  name  never  appeared  on  any  mission 
pay  sheet. 

His  unusual  scholarship  enabled  him,  however,  to 
do  in  the  way  of  self-support  what  less-equipped 
men  might  not  have  been  able  to  do.  He  had  had  a 
thorough  Hindu  education  under  the  best  teachers  in 
Benares.  He  knew  English  and  something  of  Greek 
and  of  a  number  of  the  Indian  languages,  and  was 
thorough  in  his  scholarship  in  Sanskrit,  and  later  in 
Hebrew  and  Latin.  He  was  very  diffident  of  his  own 
powers  and  deprecated  the  idea  that  he  was  a  learned 
man.    He  wrote: 

I  am  not  pundit.  I  am  not  a  learned  man.  .  .  .  But  the 
small  talents  which  God  has  given  me  I  have  tried  to  use  in 
writing  some  books  and  pamphlets. 

These  books  and  pamphlets,  however,  some  thirty 
in  number,  are  sufficient  answer  to  his  own  self-depre- 
ciation. They  show  him  to  have  been  what  all 
knew  him  to  be — a  man  of  acute  intelligence,  a  subtle 
metaphysician  and  an  accurate  scholar  even  of  the 
archaic  Sanskrit  of  the  Vedas.  When  he  spoke  of 
Hindu  philosophy  he  did  so  with  indisputable  author- 
ity. In  him,  as  in  innumerable  other  men  like  him 
in  every  land,  Christianity  showed  its  power  to 
convince  the  ablest,  most  penetrating  and  most  crit- 
ical minds,  provided  only  that  they  are  sincere  and 
reverent  and  humble  seekers  after  truth. 

As  I  have  already  indicated,  Goreh's  acceptance  of 
Christianity  was  an  intellectual  process.    He  was  a 

[■49] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

scholar  and  not  a  man  of  affairs.  He  had  Httle  touch 
with  the  actual,  struggling  life  of  men.  He  had  come 
through  no  great  moral  conflict  which  could  be  settled 
only  by  a  sheer  triumphant  act  of  faith,  functioning 
through  the  will.  He  had  reasoned  his  way  step 
by  step,  beset  ever  by  new  doubts  or  the  recurrence 
of  old  ones.  As  a  consequence  he  slipped  back 
again  and  again  on  his  approach  to  Christianity. 
As  his  biographer  says: 

He  tried  to  make  his  way  by  reason  alone,  and  reason 
failed  him.  In  consequence,  his  faith  became  dim.  It 
lost  its  first  bloom.  His  great  trial  in  years  to  come  was 
apparently  an  inability  to  discern  the  truth,  where  faith 
and  reason  failed  to  appear  equally  clear. 

This  produced  a  morbidity  of  temperament  which  showed 
itself  in  later  life.  .  .   . 

If  this  be  the  true  statement  of  the  case,  the  fault  was  more 
than  amply  atoned  for  in  that  lack  of  spiritual  joy,  often 
amounting  almost  to  a  crushing  desolation,  which  so  often 
finds  its  utterance  in  his  letters,  but  which  was  so  bravely 
and  manfully  conquered  by  persistent  struggle  and  trust  in 
God. 

A  nature  like  this  might  have  slipped  back  again, 
even  after  baptism,  or  have  subsided  into  a  negative 
and  restless  inefflciency,  if  it  had  not  at  once  plunged 
into  service  of  others,  and  it  was  that  instinct  of 
instant,  active  effort  for  others,  the  eager  desire  to 
share  with  others  what  was  known  to  his  own  soul  to 
be  a  great  good,  in  spite  of  all  harassing  doubts,  that 
proves  the  conversion  of  Goreh  to  have  been  genuine. 
He  had  come  into  a  great,  unselfish  love  and  longing 
for  others  that  they  might  come  to  Christ.  Doubts 
or  no  doubts,  such  a  man  is  a  Christian. 

[150] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

He  sought  first  of  all — and  this  was  also  the  last 
effort  of  his  life — to  win  his  own  family.  He  had  a 
younger  brother  named  Govindrao,  whom  he  loved 
with  a  great  love,  and  sought  by  every  persuasion  he 
could  use  to  win  to  Christ.  His  last  letter  was  to 
him.  He  strove  for  his  father,  also,  and  his  wife, 
and  her  he  won  again  for  himself  and  also  for  the 
Christian  faith.  His  purpose  went  out  at  once  to 
others  also.     Father  Gardner  tells  us  what  happened : 

As  soon  as  he  reached  what  he  thought  was  a  favorable 
locaHty  he  took  out  a  Christian  tract  and  began  reading  it 
aloud.  The  crowd  that  had  assembled,  however,  hooted 
at  him  and  abused  him,  and  finally  took  to  flinging  mud  at 
him.  He  was,  therefore,  obliged  to  desist,  and  came  back  all 
soiled  with  the  mud  and  dirt — but  he  was  in  no  way  dis- 
couraged. He  only  smiled  at  the  figure  he  showed  and  said 
that  he  would  go  again  and  again  until  he  tired  them  out  of 
treating  him  as  they  then  had  done. 

This  was  the  beginning  of  incessant,  patient  effort  to 
win  men  to  the  Christian  faith.  Wherever  he  went 
and  whomever  he  met  and  whatever  he  did,  this  was 
his  one  aim.  If  ever  a  man  could  say  ''One  thing  I 
do,"  Goreh  could  say  it.  He  was  not  a  man  of 
evangeHstic  gifts,  a  great  speaker,  a  man  of  energetic 
personality  or  power,  but  he  was  a  man  who  hved 
in  the  Christian  faith  and  who  Hved  to  propagate  it. 
He  was  deeply  discouraged  by  what  he  regarded  as 
the  failure  of  his  efforts.  "He  blamed  himself  as  a 
useless  man  and  attributed  the  failure  of  his  mission 
to  his  own  imperfections,"  but  Imad  ud  Din,  the  most 
powerful  convert  from  Islam  in  India,  and  Safdar  Ali, 
a  Sufi,  and  Pundit  Sita  Ram,  and  the  learned  ascetic 

[151] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Pundit  Kharath  Singh  and  many  others  of  the  strong- 
est native  Christians  in  India  were  the  result  of  his 
work,  and  others  also  of  whom  he  never  knew  and  of 
whom  perhaps  we  do  not  know.  For  no  one  can 
calculate  the  consequences  of  releasing  the  truth  of 
Christ  in  a  nation.  God's  power  is  in  God's  truth, 
and  as  no  word  of  his  shall  return  to  him  void,  what 
God  spoke  through  Nehemiah  Goreh  Hved  and  still 
lives.  When  we  are  discouraged  in  our  mission  work 
at  home  or  abroad  it  is  well  to  remember  this. 

In  1853,  at  the  age  of  twenty-nine,  Goreh  went  to 
England  as  tutor  to  the  Maharajah  Dhuleep  Singh, 
the  young  Sikh  prince  whose  kingdom  disappeared 
on  the  annexation  of  the  Punjab  in  1849.  The 
Maharajah  was  a  Christian,  and  his  guardian.  Dr. 
Logan,  was  a  Christian,  and,  as  it  was  desired  that  his 
tutor  also  should  be  a  Christian,  the  choice  fell  upon 
Goreh.  They  spent  sixteen  months  in  Europe  and 
were  lionized  everywhere,  but  Goreh  was  happy  to 
be  allowed  to  return  to  India  in  1855  on  the  same 
steamer  with  Dr.  Alexander  Duff. 

Not  long  after  Goreh's  return  to  India  the  devel- 
opment of  his  restless,  ever-questioning  mind  carried 
him  over  from  the  evangelical  views  and  moderate 
ecclesiastical  position  of  the  C.  M.  S.  missionaries, 
with  whom  he  had  been  associated,  into  relations  with 
the  "High  Church"  or  ''Catholic"  party  in  the 
Church  of  England.  In  1857  he  went  to  see  Dr.  Kay 
of  Bishop's  College  in  Calcutta  to  consult  him  on  the 
subject  of  the  incarnation  and  the  heresies  which  had 
arisen  on  the  subject  in  the  Church.  While  with 
Dr.  Kay  the  question  of  a  memorial  to  Bishop  Daniel 

[•S3] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

Wilson  arose,  and  Dr.  Kay  expressed  his  disapproval 
of  dissenters  being  asked  to  join  in  it.  This  was  a 
new  idea  to  Goreh.  At  Benares  all  Christians  had 
worked  together  on  friendly  terms.  '^This,"  as 
Father  Gardner  says,  ''it  now  appeared,  could  not 
be  done  without  sacrifice  of  principle."  Dr.  Kay 
introduced  him  not  only  to  this  new  idea,  but  also  to 
Dr.  Pusey  and  to  the  Church  Fathers.  Dr.  Hooper 
tells  us: 

Now  for  the  first  time  the  idea  of  a  society  called  the 
Church,  having  an  entity  distinct  from  the  individuals  com- 
posing it,  and  invested  with  an  authority  committed  to  her 
and  an  infallibility  guaranteed  to  her  by  Christ  himself,  was 
presented  to  our  friend's  mind;  and  the  more  thoroughly  he 
grasped  it,  the  more  he  felt  his  feet  firm  underneath  him  as 
regards  the  logical  position  of  Christianity  itself;  and  the 
vague  doubts  which  had  hitherto  clouded  his  mind,  and 
occasionally  made  him  feel  weak  when  he  had  every  reason 
to  be  strong,  passed  away  from  him  forever.  .  .  .  He  now 
began  to  view  dissenters  in  a  different  light  from  what  he 
had  before.  Not  that  he  would  ever  for  a  moment  deny 
them  the  title  of  Christians.  On  the  contrary,  he  once  said 
to  me  that  he  expected  to  find  many  of  them  in  heaven  occu- 
pying a  far  higher  place  than  himself;  and  yet  he  could  not 
ignore  or  minimize  the  importance  of  their  being  outside 
the  historical  Catholic  Church.  I  shall  never  forget  the 
pain  with  which  he  once  deprecated  my  allowing  my  daughter 
to  attend  a  Presbyterian  service  at  Dehra. 

With  his  customary  intellectual  tentativeness  and 
scrupulosity,  it  was  seven  years  before  he  was  ready 
to  leave  the  C.  M.  S.  at  Benares,  which  worked  in 
hearty  cooperation  with  unepiscopal  bodies.  Then 
he  went  to  Bishop  Milman  in  Calcutta,  and  there 

[153] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

for  the  first  time  went  to  Anglican  confession.  He 
told  a  friend  that  he  found  it  "so  difficult  that  he 
trembled  all  over  and  the  perspiration  ran  down  him, 
while  his  throat  was  almost  choked,  but,  as  he  said, 
the  consolation  which  succeeded  more  than  atoned 
for  the  shrinking  at  the  time."  Father  Gardner  tells 
us  that  "none  of  the  subsequent  occasions  gave  him 
so  great  a  sense  of  forgiveness  as  the  first."  As  he 
adopted  what  were  called  "Catholic"  practices,  his 
mind  fitted  itself  to  the  theology  of  the  new  school 
which  he  had  joined.  He  wrote  a  tract  at  this  time 
setting  forth  his  new  position  and  lamenting  that  he 
had  not  found  it  before. 

Goreh  had  been  thus  far  a  layman,  but,  says  Father 
Gardner,  "as  the  Catholic  faith  came  more  clearly 
before  him,  he  learned  that  the  anomalies  which  em- 
barrassed him  were  not  due  to  any  fault  in  the  Enghsh 
Church,  but  to  the  introduction  of  foreign  Protestant 
customs,  unauthorized  by  her  prayer  book  or  other 
formularies."  His  own  unworthiness  still  hindered 
him,  but  he  wrote  now  to  Bishop  Milman: 

As  for  my  receiving  ordination,  I  must  tell  you  that  since 
I  adopted  the  Holy  Catholic  Faith,  and  have  become  a  be- 
liever in  the  grace  of  ordination,  I  have  been  longing  for  it. 
My  object  in  wishing  to  receive  it  is  that  I  may  possess  proper 
authority  for  the  missionary  work  which  I  love  to  do,  and  that 
I  may  obtain  the  help  of  God's  grace  to  do  it  effectually. 

He  was  ordained  on  December  20,  1868. 

Having  passed  from  the  Evangelical  to  the  Catholic 
party  in  the  Church  of  England,  Goreh  now  passed 
on  in  the  CathoHc  to  one  of  the  devoted  ascetic  orders. 

[154] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

The  Cowley  Fathers,  or  the  Society  of  St.  John  the 
Evangelist,  came  to  India  in  1874.  Goreh  met 
Father  O'Neill,  the  first  missionary  of  the  Society  in 
Calcutta.  ''How  can  I  speak  of  that  saintly  man?'^ 
wrote  Goreh  in  later  years.  "He  taught  me  more  than 
anyone  else  about  the  Catholic  faith."  Goreh  soon 
joined  these  earnest  men,  but  was  long  in  doubt  as  to 
becoming  a  member  of  the  Society.  A  letter  which 
he  wrote  on  May  21,  1875,  to  Father  Benson,  the 
superior  of  the  Society,  enables  us  to  study  the 
workings  of  this  Indian  soul  in  its  effort  to  get  itself 
domesticated  to  Western  forms  of  Christian  thought 
and  feehng: 

I  must  tell  you,  Father,  that  I  am  a  very  peculiar  man; 
peculiar  in  my  viewing  things,  peculiar  in  my  doubts  and 
difficulties,  peculiar,  fearfully  peculiar,  even  in  my  sins, 
and  even  peculiar  in  my  bodily  ailments.  I  can  never  make 
anyone  understand  my  mental  perplexities  and  the  reasons 
which  produce  doubts  in  my  mind.  .  .  . 

To  conclude,  I  must  say  with  sorrow  that,  however  I  try 
constantly  to  persuade  myself  about  the  truth  of  Chris- 
tianity, my  mind  does  not  come  to  the  state  of  certainty,  and 
however  I  try  to  persuade  myself  that  my  doubts  are  the 
results  of  a  diseased  mind,  and  that  they  are  extravagant, 
and  so  forth,  as  I  said  before,  nevertheless  those  doubts  do 
have  their  effects  on  my  mind!  I  often  persuade  myself  in 
this  way,  for  instance.  Christianity  has  many  kinds  of  evi- 
dence to  prove  its  truth.  There  is  the  large  body  of  historical 
evidence  to  prove  the  truth  of  Christ's  miracles,  for  instance. 
Then  there  is  the  evidence  of  prophecy.  Then  there  is  the 
evidence  of  the  incomparable  excellence  of  the  religion  which 
it  teaches,  which,  as  the  history  of  the  world  shows,  no  human 
mind  could  conceive. 

Well,  then,  if  each  of  these  evidences  is  sufficient  to  make 
the  truth  of  Christianity  morally  certain,  then  the  force  of 

[155] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

them  all  must  be  equal  to  that  of  demonstration.  Thus,  I 
say,  I  often  persuade  myself;  but  yet  this  consideration  does 
not  produce  that  certainty  in  my  mind.  And  the  reason  is 
that  many  doubts  prevent  my  fully  being  satisfied  that  each 
of  these  evidences  is  complete  and  capable  of  proving  the 
point  morally  certain.  But,  as  I  said  before,  I  force  myself 
to  think,  in  spite  of  the  secret  dissatisfaction,  that  those 
evidences  are  complete,  each  by  itself.  And  as  I  try  to 
force  myself  to  think  so,  so  also  I  speak  in  speaking  to  others. 
Now  I  should  like  to  know  if  you  think  it  wrong?  If  you  do, 
then  I  must  shut  my  mouth  forever. 

Is  not  the  state  of  my  mind  very  curious?  It  is  indeed 
very  curious,  and  I  even  feel  doubtful  whether  I  correctly 
represent  it,  and  am  not  understating  or  overstating. 

The  asceticism  of  the  Society  appealed  to  him,  but 
it  was  less  than  that  which  his  father  had  for  years 
practiced.  He  hved  with  Father  O'Neill,  to  whom  the 
sacrifices  of  his  simple  life  were  real  sacrifices,  and 
whose  heroic  career  was  cut  short  by  cholera.  Goreh 
believed  that  India  needed  asceticism  and  celibate 
brotherhoods,  though  he  himself  had  been  married, 
and  deeply  loved  his  daughter.  She  had  been  educated 
in  England  under  Miss  Havergal  and  had  returned  to 
India  to  render  valuable  service,  and  was  the  author 
of  the  famiHar  hymn,  ^'In  the  Secret  of  His  Presence." 
He  always  wore  his  simple  Indian  dress  and  kept  to  the 
plainest  Indian  food  and  style  of  living,  but  he  never 
took  up  real  Indian  asceticism.  He  lived  as  a  simple 
Indian  scholar  might  live.  All  this  would  be  the 
hardest  asceticism  for  a  foreigner,  however,  as  Father 
O'Neill  discovered.     Nehemiah  tells  us: 

Father  O'Neill  felt  himself  called  to  a  Hfe  of  greater  poverty 
than  the  Cowley  Fathers  even  generally  lived,  and  asked  me  to 

['56] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

join  him.  We  went  to  Indore,  where  he  lived  with  the  natives. 
Fr.  O'Neill  could  not  sit  cross-legged  as  we  do,  for  Enghsh 
people  never  can,  and  so  he  used  to  recline  when  we  sat  at 
mealtimes.  I  once  made  Fr.  O'Neill  angry.  I  said  I  thought 
it  was  wrong  to  use  pepper,  for  if  we  Hved  on  such  coarse 
food  to  mortify  our  appetites,  we  ought  not  to  take  pepper, 
which  in  some  degree  made  the  food  more  palatable.  But 
Fr.  O'Neill  did  not  agree  with  me,  and  pepper  was  admitted 
at  our  meals.  At  last  Fr.  O'Neill  was  persuaded  to  buy  him- 
self a  chair  and  table,  but  it  was  a  miserable  place  for  him; 
and  even  of  the  scanty  food  we  had  he  scarcely  took  much,  but 
generally  gave  away  his  breakfast  to  lepers  and  sick  people. 

At  last  Goreh  decided  to  become  a  novice  in  the 
S.  S.  J.  E.,  and  in  1876  went  to  England  to  the  Mission 
House  in  Cowley  for  the  purpose.  It  was  not  a  happy  ex- 
perience.    He  spoke  of  it  years  afterwards  to  a  friend: 

At  once  I  felt  miserable.  Oh,  those  cold  cells,  in  which 
one  has  no  privacy!  That  horrid  English  food,  and  then 
Fr.  Benson  told  me  to  wash  the  floor  of  my  cell.  I  told  him 
at  once  I  could  not  do  it,  and  to  send  some  one  else.  Those 
fathers  do  menial  work.  I  have  seen  the  fathers  washing  the 
mission-house  stairs.  Oh,  how  I  hate  the  life!  I  used  to  cry 
and  kneel  down  to  Fr.  Benson  and  beseech  him  to  send  me 
away.  He  always  said,  "You  will  be  all  right  when  you 
return  to  India."  The  only  consolation  I  had  was  going 
to  see  Dr.  Pusey.  I  told  him  ail,  and  he  said:  "Mr.  Goreh, 
how  do  you  feel  in  going  through  a  tunnel?  Flow  dark  it  is! 
How  at  a  loss  one  feels!  Yet,  after  all,  that  tunnel  will  soon 
lead  on  to  the  Hght,  and  with  what  joy  we  hail  the  Hght. 
Well,  your  spiritual  experience  is  something  like  that  tunnel; 
but  if  you  persevere,  you  will  come  out  into  the  glorious 
Hght."  I  don't  understand  what  he  meant,  but  I  felt  a 
little  cooler  in  my  admiration  for  Dr.  Pusey  after  that  sen- 
tence; it  seemed  so  silly.  Still  I  love  him,  only  not  so  blindly 
as  I  did. 

[157] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

It  became  clear  that  he  had  no  vocation  for  the 
Society,  and  after  a  year  and  a  half  in  England  he 
returned  to  India  to  work  with  the  Society,  but  not 
as  a  full  member  of  it,  and  in  1885  he  was  released 
even  from  the  novitiate  in  a  very  high-minded  a  ad 
noble-spirited  letter  from  Father  Benson.  His  at- 
tempt to  duplicate  the  Anghcan  experience  of  the 
Cowley  Fathers  was  a  vain  effort.  Subtle  and  adap- 
tive as  his  intellect  was,  he  could  not  bring  it,  any 
more  than  he  could  bring  his  Indian  temperament, 
into  accord  with  an  Occidental  expressioa  of  the  ascetic 
element  in  the  Christian  Hfe. 

With  sympathetic  recognition  of  his  difficulties 
Father  Gardner  says: 

In  his  season  of  struggle  we  can  now  easily  understand  how 
the  routine,  the  minutiae  of  the  religious  life  would  gnaw  his 
sensitive  soul,  if  he  allowed  himself  to  be  worried  by  them. 
He  felt  he  ought  not  to  remain  longer  in  a  community  under 
rule,  although  at  the  same  time  he  knew  he  would  not  gain 
by  leaving  it.  He  fretted  at  what  seemed  to  him  the  impos- 
sibihty  of  carrying  out  the  spirit  as  well  as  the  letter  of  our 
rule.  The  "  seven  hours  of  prayer  "  troubled  him.  Common 
sense  required  that  a  limit  should  be  placed  on  the  time 
used  in  their  recitation,  but  he  felt  when  he  read  the  Psalter 
he  needed  to  have  his  own  time  to  meditate  upon  the  words, 
and  not  to  be  hurried  or  compelled  to  keep  in  unison  with 
his  fellow  worshipers.  Meditation  was  irksome.  The  rule 
demanded  at  least  an  hour  daily,  but  his  mind  began  to  wan- 
der at  once,  and  he  could  not  keep  it  in  check.  The  fact  was 
he  was  an  Eastern,  and  the  Western  method  of  meditation 
was  as  foreign  to  him  as  Western  philosophy  is  to  Eastern. 
And  so  he  went  on  examining  one  rule  after  another.  It 
was  in  vain  that  his  superiors,  confident  of  his  real  vocation 
to  a  life  of  prayer  and  asceticism,  dispensed  him  or,  rather, 

[158] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

allowed  him  to  consider  himself  dispensed  from  some  ordi- 
nary obligations.  He  found  himself  unable  to  accept  dis- 
pensations. 

It  was  evident  that  the  Indian  spirit  must  be  left 
free  to  work  out  its  own  forms  of  utterance  in  the 
liberty  wherewith  Christ  makes  Indians  free  from  all 
our  Western  ritualisms.  Goreh's  mind,  sensitive  and 
adaptive  as  it  was,  kept  its  integrity,  and  the  soul, 
though  it  had  greatly  burdened  itself,  halted  before 
it  had  gone  too  far. 

The  intricate  spiritual  and  intellectual  experiences 
through  which  Goreh  passed  and  which  lasted  his 
whole  life  long  did  not  interfere  with  his  unceasing 
work  as  one  of  the  best-equipped  and  most-untiring 
Christian  apologists  in  India.  His  own  countrymen 
acknowledged  his  scholarship  and  authority,  and 
listened  to  him  with  respect.  He  believed  in  offer- 
ing the  whole  body  of  Western  theological  conviction 
to  India.  He  often  lost  the  sense  of  perspective  and 
proportion  and  magnified  nonessential  things,  but 
his  voice  was  clear  on  the  great  foundations  of  the 
faith.  His  greatest  book,  issued  in  i860,  was  entitled, 
"Shaddarshana  Darpana;  or,  Hindu  Philosophy  Ex- 
amined, by  a  Benares  Pundit."  It  was  translated 
into  English  under  the  title  "Hindu  Philosophical 
System;  a  Rational  Refutation,"  but  he  pubhshed  also 
many  pamphlets  and  addresses,  including  a  remark- 
able treatise  entitled  "Proofs  of  the  Divinity  of  Our 
Lord,  Stated  in  a  Letter  to  a  Friend."  He  wrote  this 
for  Pundita  Ramabai,  whom  he  had  led  into  the 
Christian  faith,  but  who  had  temporarily  lost  her 
spiritual  footing  under  the  agnostic  and   Unitarian 

[159] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

influences  which  wrought  upon  her  on  her  visit  to 
the  West.  Goreh  seized  every  opportunity  which 
came  to  him  to  reach  men,  ignorant  and  poor  men 
as  well  as  the  educated,  but  his  main  work,  just  as 
in  these  pubHcations,  was  directed  to  the  thinking 
and  educated  classes,  first  to  the  thoughtful  Hindus 
who  held  to  the  old  philosophy,  especially  the  "Ve- 
danta,"  then  to  the  Brahmos  and  other  Indians  who 
were  seeking  to  reform  Hinduism  without  becoming 
Christians,  and  then  to  the  young,  EngHsh-educated 
men  taught  in  the  government  schools. 

He  was  always  very  positive  and  emphatic  in  his 
declarations  of  the  error  and  inadequacy  of  the  old 
Hinduism.  The  great  moral  defect  of  Hinduism,  in 
his  view,  as  his  friend  and  fellow  worker,  Mr.  Hill, 
wrote,  was  its  ignorance  of  what  sin  really  is. 

Their  dilemma  is,  "Is  a  thing  right  because  God  does  it, 
or  does  God  do  it  because  it  is  right?"  The  latter,  of  course, 
because  the  eternal  law  of  right  is  supreme.  But  by  the 
former  alternative,  to  which  they  cling,  they  seek  to  justify 
all  the  immoralities  of  their  gods,  Krishna,  and  so  forth,  as  well 
as  excuse  the  evil  deeds  of  the  Brahmans  who  imitate  them. 
It  was  this  which  so  disgusted  Fr.  Goreh  with  Hinduism,  for 
he  found  in  it  such  perfect  confusion  between  essential  right 
and  wrong,  in  the  strongest  possible  contrast  to  the  Christian 
commandments  and  intuition. 

He  welcomed  a  translation  of  the  Vedas  because, 
as  he  wrote: 

The  Hindus  do  not  know  at  all  what  the  Vedas  contain, 
and  the  prevalent  notion  among  the  Hindus  is  that  they 
contain  nothing  but  a  most  sublime  knowledge  of  divine  and 
spiritual  truths.     But  many  of  them,  when  they  shall  see 

[.60] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

what  stuff  these  Agni  Suktas,  Vayu  Suktas  contain,  will 
begin  to  think  that  it  does  not  deserve  the  name  of  a  divine 
revelation. 

He  did  not  believe  that  even  the  good  of  Hinduism 
was  capable  of  discovery  except  by  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness.    In  some  lectures  in  Bombay  it  is  said: 

He  dwells  especially  upon  the  incapacity  which  men  have 
always  shown  for  disentangling  what  is  good  among  heathen 
religions  from  the  evil  which  is  mixed  up  with  it,  unless  they 
have  Christianity  to  guide  them  in  their  selections.  How- 
ever beautiful  some  extracts  from  heathen  writings  may  be, 
nevertheless  they  do  not  convey  to  them  that  idea  of  God 
which  the  reader  initiated  in  Christianity  is  able  to  discover. 

He  came  to  be  almost  hopeless  of  the  conversion 
of  the  old  orthodox  Hindus.     He  declared: 

They  are  sunk  in  superstition.  Their  education  in  their 
own  Sastras  does  not  enlighten  them.  .  .  .  The  more  rehg- 
ious,  the  more  earnest-minded  a  Hindu  is,  the  more  difficult 
he  is  to  convert.  Preachers  of  Christianity  are  apt  to  think 
that  such  are  the  men  best  to  go  to,  to  talk  with  them  on  the 
subject  of  Christianity.  But  it  seems  almost  useless  to  go 
to  such  men.  Such  men  are  most  incapable  of  understand- 
ing your  arguments  either  against  Hinduism  or  in  favor  of 
Christianity. 

But  Goreh  himself  had  been  just  such  an  earnest- 
minded  Hindu,  and  the  experience  of  all  foreign  mis- 
sionaries, since  foreign  missions  began  in  the  conver- 
sion of  Paul,  shows  that  the  best  Christians  are  made 
not  from  religious  indifferents  or  compromisers,  but 
from  the  most  earnest  followers  of  other  religions, 
who  have  been  earnest  enough  to  desire  more  than  any 
but  Christ,  the  Desire  of  the  nations,  can  ever  supply. 

[i6,] 


ni 

GoREH  discovered  the  truth  of  this  in  his  contro- 
versy with  the  Brahmos  and  the  other  Samajes. 
This,  for  a  time,  even  more  than  his  constant  battle 
with  orthodox  Hinduism,  constituted  his  chief  activ- 
ity. ^'The  Brahmo  was  to  him  as  constant  an  object 
of  controversial  antagonism  as  the  Manichaean  was 
to  Augustine."  It  is  worth  noting  this  point.  Goreh 
knew  Hinduism  and  Brahmanism  far  better  than 
Western  scholars  knew  them.  He  met  their  adher- 
ents with  unfailing  courtesy  and  love,  but  he  never 
slurred  over  or  ignored  their  errors  or  falsehoods. 
He  threw  all  his  power  into  earnest  contention  for 
Christian  truth,  and,  so  far  from  alienating  men,  he 
kept  their  confidence  and  won  many  to  a  faith  in 
Jesus  Christ,  the  Saviour.  Very  early  in  the  career  of 
Keshub  Chunder  Sen,  the  best  known  of  all  the 
Brahmo  leaders,  Goreh  met  him  in  Cawnpore,  where 
Keshub  came  to  call  upon  him.  Goreh  was  aston- 
ished to  discover  that  the  Brahmo  leader  had  never 
read  any  book  on  Christian  evidences,  that  he  was 
flowing  along  on  an  easy  tide  of  sentiment  without 
any  of  the  patient,  scrupulous  examination  of  the 
evidence  for  and  against  every  point  through  which 
Goreh  had  passed.  Keshub  almost  boasted  to 
Phillips  Brooks,  who  met  him  in  Calcutta  in  1883,  that 
he  never  read.  Goreh  set  himself  to  study  Brahmoism 
with  his  customary  care  and  soon  issued  his  firm 
appeal  against  it.     He  visited  Calcutta  in  his  studies 

[162] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

and  there  repeatedly  met  Keshub.  As  he  came  to 
know  Brahmoism  thoroughly,  he  attacked  it  on 
four  grounds. 

(i)  As  ignorant  of  Hinduism.  In  his  '' Existence  of 
Brahmoism"  he  refers  to  this: 

When  at  a  meeting  at  Lahore,  convened  to  hold  discus- 
sion with  the  Brahmos,  I  said  that  while  the  teachers  of  the 
*' Vedanta"  taught  on  the  one  hand  that  God  and  we  are  one, 
they  also  taught  on  the  other  that  God  is  distinct  from  us 
and  we  ought  to  worship  him.  A  Brahmo  gentleman  said 
with  great  vehemence,  "They  were  not  idiots!"  This  shows 
how  ignorant  they  are  of  the  true  notions  of  Hinduism. 

It  was  very  different  with  him.  His  knowledge  of 
Hinduism  was  original  and  thorough  and  accurate. 
The  average  Brahmo  had  but  a  superficial  and  shift- 
ing understanding  of  his  own  ancient  faith. 

(2)  As  a  Westernizing  influence  of  a  false  kind.  In 
his  tract  on  the  divinity  of  our  Lord,  written  for 
Ramabai, 

he  shows  that  instead  of  Christianity  being  a  Western  relig- 
ion forced  upon  the  Hindus,  it  is  Brahmoism  in  its  various 
stages,  which  is  Western  throughout,  casting  aside  elements 
of  truth  which  are  the  essential  characteristics  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  these  are  found,  however  distorted  and  degraded, 
as  elements  of  oriental  tradition  in  the  Hindu  Triad  and  the 
Avataras  of  Vishnu.  The  Western  teaching,  beginning  from 
Ram  Mohun  Roi,  has  not  helped  but  hindered  the  purifica- 
tion of  Hindu  mythology,  which  the  acceptance  of  Christian 
truth  would  have  effected. 

(3)  As  uncertain  and  vacillating  in  its  basis  and  yet 
unwilling  to  search  sincerely  for  truth. 

(4)  As  being  nothing  but  natural  religion  with  ad- 

[163] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

ditions  wholly  drawn  from  Christian  sources.  He 
urged  that  as  Brahmos  thus  got  all  that  was  of  great- 
est value  from  Christianity,  they  should  not  stop  with 
their  eclecticism,  but  should  inquire  into  the  full 
teaching  of  the  gospel  and  accept  it.  He  wrote  in 
his  first  tract  to  the  Brahmos,  in  1867: 

I  can  prove  that  the  notions  which  you  have  now  adopted 
as  to  the  nature  and  attributes  of  God,  and  in  favor  of  which 
you  have  cast  off  the  contrary  tenets  of  Hinduism,  were 
originally  contained  only  in  the  professed  revelation  which 
we  have  in  the  Bible,  There,  too,  they  can  be  traced  to  the 
Bible,  and  no  other  source.  Therefore,  it  is  your  duty  to 
accept  the  whole  revelation  which  we  find  in  the  Bible,  and 
not  only  those  parts  of  it  which  take  your  fancy,  agree  with 
your  predilections  and  involve  you  in  no  social  ostracism. 

In  his  "Four  Lectures  to  the  Brahmos,"  and  later 
lectures  in  1875  and  1879,  he  pressed  their  dilemma 
upon  them,  due  to  the  fact  that  they  had  borrowed 
all  their  true  teaching  from  Christianity.  If  Chris- 
tianity was  true  in  what  they  had  borrowed,  why  did 
they  not  take  all?  If  it  was  not  true  in  what  they 
had  not  borrowed,  how  did  they  know  it  was  true  in 
what  they  had?  He  further  urged  upon  them  the 
simple  and  indisputable  fact  of  human  history  that 
all  religious  progress  and,  we  would  dare  to  add,  all 
political  progress  for  the  Christian  centuries,  had 
come  only  from  Christianity. 

After  a  time  he  despaired  of  reaching  the  Brahmos. 
He  kept  faith  in  Keshub  Chundar  Sen  as  an  upright 
man  as  long  as  he  could,  but  lamented  his  lack  of 
moral  courage,  and  at  last  had  to  give  up  his  confidence 
in  him  even  as  a  really  honest  man.     With  the  Aryas 

[164] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

he  had  no  patience  from  the  beginning.  He  saw 
through  Dayanand  Saraswati  from  the  first.  He 
knew  too  much  Sanskrit  not  to  see  that  he  was  will- 
fully trying  to  mislead  others.     He  wrote: 

I  have  a  great  detestation  for  the  Arya  Samajists.  The 
founder  of  this  sect,  Dayanand  Saraswati,  who  is  now  dead, 
has  invented  this  religion  by  putting  false,  glaringly  false, 
interpretation  on  the  passages  of  the  Vedas.  It  is  built  on 
downright  falsehood.     Brahmoism  is  not  such. 

There  are  hundreds  of  men  who  are  thus  deceived  by 
Dayanand,  and  are  now  being  deceived  by  his  disciples. 
I  thought  that  it  would  be  a  great  thing  to  undeceive  these 
people  in  this  respect,  and  show  them  that  the  teaching  of  the 
Vedas  is  not  what  Dayanand  told  them.  They  do  not  teach 
the  worship  of  the  one  true  God,  but  their  religion  is  poly- 
theism. This  will  be  the  means  of  turning  them  toward 
Christianity.  Dayanand  may  be  said  to  have  prepared 
many  men  for  Christianity. 

He  abandoned  this  hope.  ''They  do  not  seem  to 
care  for  the  truth,"  he  wrote,  after  toiling  for  them, 
"but  simply  are  determined  to  propagate  their  views 
and  to  oppose  Christianity." 

The  Arya  Samaj  is  more  powerful  to-day  than  it 
was  in  Goreh's  time,  but  the  situation  as  to  the 
Brahmos  has  completely  changed.  Then  the  Brahmo 
movement  was  very  strong.  There  were  many  ear- 
nest men  in  it  who  had  repudiated  the  old  Hinduism 
and  seemed  to  be  moving  toward  Christianity.  But 
Hinduism  was  too  subtle  and  adaptive  to  let  them  go, 
and  to-day  these  promising  movements  have  prac- 
tically collapsed.  Men  whom  the  new  education 
and  the  ethical  illuminations  of  Christianity  have 
separated  from  orthodox  Hinduism  are  now  orthodox 

[^65] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Hindus.  Hindu  orthodoxy  has  modified  itself  to 
provide  room  for  them  and  for  ideas  which  are  the 
utter  contradiction  of  the  older  Hindu  conceptions. 
This  is  a  welcome  change.  It  is  what  was  to  be 
expected,  and  we  rejoice  in  it,  though  not  in  the 
moral  inconsistency,  in  the  intellectual  self-contra- 
dictions which  it  produces.  And  the  change  immensely 
increases,  for  the  time  being,  the  difficulty  of  the 
apologetic  and  evangehstic  task  of  Christianity. 

The  form  of  Hindu  philosophy,  however,  which  has 
been  taken  up  and  carried  forward  in  this  modern 
revision  of  Hinduism  is  the  philosophy  of  the  Vedanta, 
and  it  was  the  Vedanta  philosophy  upon  which 
Goreh  expended  his  most  studious  labors,  with  the 
result  that  out  of  a  vast  and  painstaking  examina- 
tion of  the  Sanskrit  texts  he  produced  the  "Refuta- 
tations,"  of  which  I  have  already  spoken.  After  a 
careful  and  detailed  examination  of  the  Vedantin 
views  in  detail,  at  the  end  he  comes  squarely  to  the 
declaration  that  the  Vedanta  is  not  theistic,  and 
cannot  be  without  ceasing  to  be  the  Vedanta.  This 
is  the  way  he  puts  it: 

Viewed  superficially,  it  has,  I  allow,  a  guise  of  theism;  and 
yet,  when  investigated  critically,  I  cannot  see  that  it  is  any- 
thing but  a  sort  of  atheism. 

The  distinctive  article  of  theism  is  the  belief  in  a  God; 
but  God  is  eliminated  from  the  Vedanta.  Its  Brahma  is 
neither  creator  of  the  world,  nor  its  preserver,  nor  its  lord; 
in  short,  the  world  is  out  of  relation  to  him.  .  .  . 

Moreover,  as  to  a  theistic  religion,  God  and  the  adoration 
of  him  are  essential,  so  likewise  is  discrimination  between 
sin  and  virtue;  and  this  discrimination  is  ignored  by  the 
Vedanta.  .  .  . 

[i66] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  fundamental  dogmas  of  the 
Vedanta  are  opposed  to  all  godliness,  and  are  subversive  of 
the  principles  of  morality.  It  is  perfectly  certain  that, 
according  to  them,  one  is  not  called  upon  to  fear  and  to 
adore  God,  to  detest  sin  and  to  love  virtue.  Inconsistently 
enough,  however,  there  are  Vedantins  who  are  earnestly 
devoted  to  the  worship  of  what  they  take  to  be  God.  This 
comes  from  their  following  the  dictates  of  their  better  judg- 
ment, the  voice  of  God,  rather  than  their  own  chief  tenets. 
.  .  .  Powerful  indeed  must  be  the  natural  instinct  of  truth, 
if,  in  spite  of  the  causes  tending  to  debiHtate  it,  which  I  have 
lately  spoken  of,  it  still  asserts  its  prerogative,  with  some 
effect,  among  very  misbehevers.  Even  through  their  mouths 
it  bears  witness  against  false  doctrine,  and  in  behalf  of  God 
and  the  truth.^ 

This  is  the  real  Vedanta,  but  the  modern  Higher 
Hinduism,  which  is  making  a  habitable  place  inside 
Hindu  religion  and  caste  for  the  men  v^ho  two  genera- 
tions ago  were  breaking  away  in  the  Brahmo  move- 
ment, has  set  about  a  great  transformation  of  the 
Vedanta.  Men  educated  in  Western  schools  and 
facing  the  facts  and  reahties  of  life  cannot  Hve  by 
the  old  Vedanta,  with  its  denial  of  reahty  and  its 
dissolution  of  the  very  foundations  of  truth.  And 
yet  these  men  are  naturally  averse  to  a  rupture  with 
their  racial  past.     Their  effort,  accordingly,  is 

to  link  the  past  to  the  present,  and  so  enlarge  the  outlook 
by  trying  to  harmonize  the  older  Hinduism  with  the  pro- 
gressive, scientific  spirit  of  the  present  century.  A  Vedantic 
terminology  is  freely  used,  but  its  exposition  by  the  new 
school  would  not  be  accepted  by  pundits  of  the  older  type. 
It  is  altogether  too  modern.     Meanings  and  senses  are  read 

»"A  Mirror  of  the  Hindu  Philosophical  Systems,"  the  latest  English 
edition  of  the  "Refutations,"  pp.  375,  377,  379,  380. 

[167] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

back  into  the  old  Sanskrit,  which  probably  had  no  existence 
in  the  author's  mind.  It  is  very  noticeable  in  the  present  day, 
when  Western  thought  and  influence  are  everywhere  in  the 
ascendant,  how  a  new  kind  of  style  and  expression  has  found 
an  entrance  into  the  writings  of  those  Hindus  who  think 
largely  in  English — those,  e.  g.,  of  Swami  Vivekananda  and 
his  master,  Ramakrishna  Parama-hansa — quite  different 
from  that  of  purely  native  thinkers  who  think  in  Sanskrit, 
such  as  the  Indian  pundits  and  gurus.  There  is  an  applica- 
tion of  the  language  of  the  Vedanta  to  new  and  even  opposite 
conceptions  and  thoughts.  It  is  further  significant  that  the 
publications  and  discourses  advocating  the  revival  of  the 
Vedanta  are  almost  entirely  in  English.  The  sacred  lan- 
guage so  long  used  for  religious  purposes — the  classic  San- 
skrit— is  discarded,  and  the  English  tongue  is  considered  good 
enough  for  the  discussion  of  the  mysteries  of  the  faith.  The 
mere  fact  that  the  language  of  rehgious  discussion  has  been 
changed  shows  how  great  the  new  departure  is.  But  the 
point  of  chief  interest  to  Christians  is  this:  that  while  this 
neo-Hinduism  is  set  forth  as  a  proud  rival  to  Christianity, 
it  is  yet  saturated  with  its  spirit,  and  there  is  an  evident 
desire  to  harmonize  the  ideals  of  Hinduism  with  those  of 
Christianity.^ 

This  is  the  Brahmo  principle  under  a  new  spirit, 
a  spirit  of  Swadeshi,  of  nationahstic  consistency,  of 
loyalty  to  the  past  and  a  willingness  for  an  evolution- 
ary modification,  but  not  for  a  conversion.  In  this 
spirit  India  is  ready  to  become  Christian,  provided 
Christ  is  wilHng  to  become  Indian.  But  Christ  is 
Christ,  neither  Indian,  American  nor  Jew,  but  the 
divine  Truth  to  whom  humanity  is  to  be  adjusted,  not 
he  to  humanity.  Nehemiah  Goreh  clearly  discerned 
the    uniqueness    and    absoluteness    of    Christianity, 

1  Slaler,  "The  Higher  Hinduism,"  p.  82  f. 

[.68] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

and  he  neither  sought  nor  offered  any  compromises. 
He  claimed  Christ's  sole  supremacy. 

Yet  this  man,  so  positive  and  courageous  as  we 
have  seen,  was  harassed  all  his  Kfe,  as  we  have  also 
seen,  by  doubts  and  misgivings.  In  a  letter  written 
February  i8,  1884,  thirty-six  years  after  his  baptism, 
he  wrote: 

When  I  have  doubts  about  certain  things,  it  seldom  hap- 
pens that  they  are  removed  by  others.  I  myself  get  out  of 
them.  It  was  not  by  the  persuasion  of  any  missionaries 
that  I  was  led  to  embrace  Christianity.  After  I  became  a 
Christian  I  was  troubled  and  tried  very  severely  by  these 
doubts.  Doubt  about  the  truth  of  Christianity  itself,  doubt 
about  the  divinity  of  Christ,  doubt  about  the  mode  of  bap- 
tism. I  resorted  to  several  persons  to  get  my  doubts  solved. 
After  the  first  doubt  I  do  not  know  to  how  many  persons  I 
resorted,  even  from  India  to  England  and  Ireland — to  Arch- 
bishop Whately.  This  was  on  my  first  visit  to  England  in  1854. 
But  I  got  no  satisfaction,  at  least  full  satisfaction,  about  any 
of  the  above-mentioned  three  doubts  from  any  man. 

On  October  24,  1889,  he  wrote: 

Many  years  ago,  about  1856  and  1857, 1  was  much  troubled 
by  doubts  about  the  divinity  of  Christ.  I  then  thought  that 
I  found  a  solution  of  those  doubts,  and  I  do  not  think  I  was 
troubled  by  them  for  many  years.  That  solution  now  ap- 
pears to  me  unsatisfactory,  and  those  doubts  have  begun  to 
trouble  me  again. 

Dr.  Hooper,  as  we  have  seen,  told  us  that  when 
Goreh  passed  from  the  evangelical  view  into  the  sacra- 
mental, "the  vague  doubts  which  had  hitherto  clouded 
his  mind,  and  occasionally  made  him  feel  weak  when 
he  had  every  reason  to  be  strong,  passed  away  from 

[169] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

him  forever."  That  was  in  the  sixties.  How  far  from 
the  fact  this  was  these  quotations  of  1884  and  1889 
show.  Dr.  Hooper  himself  tells  us  that  Goreh  often 
told  him  that  "while  he  had  exchanged  Hinduism 
for  Christianity  on  an  undoubted  conviction  that  the 
proof  of  the  latter  vastly  surpassed  that  of  the  for- 
mer, yet  he  could  not  be  sure  that  some  day  some  new 
argument  might  not  be  found  which  would  turn  the 
scale  the  other  way." 

In  1875  in  his  letter  he  wrote  to  Father  Benson: 
^'Doubts  and  perplexities  have  never  left  me." 
Father  Gardner  says  that  1884  was  a  year  of  special 
doubts  and  difficulties. 

His  acute  mind,  and  the  great  stress  which  he  was  ac- 
customed to  lay  upon  the  importance  of  accepting  by  reason 
all  that  came  under  the  domain  of  faith,  made  him  peculiarly 
susceptible  to  such  spiritual  troubles.  He  could  take  noth- 
ing on  trust;  or,  rather,  when  faith  opened  out  to  him  her 
treasures,  his  reason  impelled  him  to  turn  them  over  on  all 
sides,  and  examine  each  one  minutely,  so  as  to  apprehend  the 
rationale  of  every  detail,  as  well  as  the  reasonableness  of  what 
had  to  be  accepted  as  a  whole.  This,  in  time,  no  doubt  begot 
scrupulosity.  He  had  been  warned  over  and  over  again  of 
this  danger.  But  it  seemed  almost  an  impossibihty  for  him 
to  avoid  it.  He  regarded  it  as  a  temptation  if  he  sought  to 
put  it  aside.  Doubts,  difficulties,  suspicions  would  arise 
in  his  mind  on  almost  every  conceivable  subject,  and  could 
not  be  put  down.  In  several  of  his  letters  the  same  thoughts 
are  continually  repeated,  although  those  which  come  between 
such  letters  bespeak  a  joyous  freedom.  The  intervals  of 
refreshment  were  none  the  less  real  because  the  times  of 
struggle  were  the  more  keenly  remembered.  Inconceivably 
painful  were  the  occasional  temptations  to  doubt  the  most 
elementary  articles  of  the  faith,  and  the  clearest  evidences 
of  God's  working  in  his  own  soul.     They  were  assaults  of 

[170] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

the  evil  one,  through  which  he  bravely  persevered,  but  as 
they  arose  they  seemed  to  crush  him. 

Dr.  Pusey  once  tried  to  help  him  in  his  doubts  by  a 
letter,  as  well  as  by  the  conversation  about  the  tunnel, 
closing  his  letter  with  the  words: 

I  am  sure  that  you  do  believe,  only  there  is  this  mist  hang- 
ing about  you,  damp  and  cold,  which  shuts  out  the  sight  of 
the  sun,  but  it  keeps  you  in  life,  although  not  with  the  glow 
which  you  would  long  for.     God  be  with  you. 

And  he  did  beHeve,  with  the  belief  which  cries,  "I 
believe;  help  thou  mine  unbeHef." 

His  doubts  were  intellectual,  not  moral.  They 
made  him  miserable,  but  he  still  clung  to  God  and 
truth,  and  his  whole  moral  nature  followed  loyally 
on.  He  was  living  by  the  prescription  of  BushnelFs 
great  sermon  on  "The  Dissolving  of  Doubt."  In 
1885  he  wrote  to  Father  Page: 

I  am  miserable  in  more  than  one  way,  but  I  am  now 
speaking  only  of  one  way.  Doubts  constantly  arise  in  my 
mind  from  time  to  time  and  perplex  me  very  much.  .  .  . 
Amid  all  my  fearful  doubts  and  perplexities  and  uncertain- 
ties, there  is  one  thing  which  affords  me  comfort.  When  my 
soul  is  perplexed  with  doubts,  I  say  to  my  soul:  ''My  soul, 
you  are  perplexed  with  doubts,  but  why  trouble  yourself  by 
remaining  in  suspense?  Do  what  you  can.  Give  up  Chris- 
tianity and  join  the  Brahmo  samaj  or  Prarthana  samaj,  if 
you  can  do  so.  Go  back  to  Protestantism,  if  you  can  do  so. 
Be  a  Roman  Catholic,  if  you  can  do  so. "  When  I  say  this  to 
my  soul,  I  think  my  soul  feels  that  it  cannot  do  any  of  these 
things.  Then  I  say  to  it,  "Then  remain  as  you  are."  And  I 
also  feel  that  the  reason  why  my  soul  cannot  do  any  one  of 
these  things  is  not  the  fear  of  man,  but  the  impressions  which 

['7'] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

my  examining  and  reading  all  sides  of  the  question  have  im- 
perceptibly produced  in  my  soul.  This,  then,  is  the  instinct, 
which  is  the  only  logic  of  an  unlearned  and  ignorant  man 
like  myself.  But  a  man  can  rely  on  such  an  instinct  only 
if  he  feels  sure  that  no  wrong  motive  is  influencing  his  con- 
duct, and  that  he  never  willfully  shuts  his  eyes  to  any  light. . . . 
I  said  that  hitherto  it  has  so  happened  that  by  reading 
the  writings  of  unbelievers,  theists  and  Roman  Catholics, 
the  hollowness  and  baselessness  of  their  systems  has  ap- 
peared to  me  more  and  more.  But  I  must  tell  you  this, 
also,  that  should  the  reading  of  such  books  make  me  see  the 
truth  of  any  of  those  systems,  I  am  not  afraid  of  that.  Very 
doubting  as  my  mind  is,  still  I  trust,  or  rather  wish  to  trust, 
in  the  great  Father  of  us  all,  that  if  I  ever  keep  the  door  of 
my  mind  open  to  every  Hght,  if  fear  of  man  is  not  preventing 
me  from  doing  what  is  right;  if  I  am  ever  ready  to  follow 
my  instinct,  that  which  will  appear  to  me  to  be  the  truth  will 
be  the  truth,  and  why  should  I  fear  of  embracing  it?  I  can- 
not say  that  even  a  sincere  lover  of  truth  may  not  be  allowed 
to  fall  into  some  minor  errors,  but  surely  such  a  man  cannot 
be  allowed  to  fall  into  an  error  by  which  he  will  perish. 


He  followed  the  course  prescribed  by  Jesus.  ''If 
any  man  willeth  to  do  his  will,  he  shall  know  of  the 
teaching,"  but  he  did  not  know,  as  Bushnell  knew, 
that  "doubters  never  can  dissolve  or  extirpate  their 
doubts  by  inquiry,  search,  investigation,  or  any  kind 
of  speculative  endeavor,"  and  he  kept  on  ceaselessly 
questioning  and  investigating  all  things,  great  and 
small,  with  an  intellectual  scrupulosity  that  gave  the 
heart  no  rest. 

Indeed,  one  wonders,  in  reading  this  true  saint's 
inner  life  story,  whether  he  ever  knew  the  real  joy  of 
simple  trust  in  Jesus  Christ,  not  as  a  reasoned  doctrine 
of  the  faith,  but  as  the  knowledge  of  a  living,  loving, 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

personal  Friend  and  Sa\dour.  There  is  no  trace  of 
his  having  ever  entered  into  this  simple,  joyful  secret 
of  the  Christian  Hfe.  And  yet  how  could  his  daughter 
have  been  Miss  Havergal's  dear  friend,  and  the  old 
man  never  have  learned  it?  He  was  a  scholar,  a 
Christian  rationahst  who  accepted  authority  on 
grounds  of  reason,  but  he  was  not  a  leader  of  men's 
hearts,  for  his  own  was  never  satisfied.  Mrs.  Pope, 
in  whose  home  he  died,  said : 

Once  he  asked  a  friend  what  was  to  be  understood  by 
Christ's  unconditional  promise  to  answer  prayer  and  give 
what  was  asked  for.  On  being  told  that  she  believed  it 
never  failed  if  perseveringly  asked  and  patiently  waited 
for,  he  said,  "I  have  made  one  request  to  God  for  forty- 
two  years,  and  he  has  not  granted  it  me."  This  prayer  was 
for  joy  in  religion.  He  had  been  converted  by  those  who  lay 
great  stress  on  this  feeling,  and  he  longed  for  it  with  no  com- 
mon desire,  but  God  never  seemed  to  hear  him.  He  was  very 
saintly,  but  utterly  joyless. 

Suddenly  at  the  last,  on  October  29, 1895,  ^^  passed 
away,  out  of  his  pain  into  the  land  of  peace,  where  he 
surely  found  the  joy  that  he  had  missed  on  earth. 
His  was  a  nature  that  needed  a  wholesome  objective 
life,  a  Hfe  with  enthusiasm  and  devotion  to  outward 
ends  like  Sawayama's,  and  he  missed  these.  He 
brought  Ramabai  to  an  intellectual  conversion,  but 
the  real  conversion  of  her  heart  and  personaHty  came 
years  later  through  Dr.  Pentecost.  If  Goreh  had 
fallen  under  influences  which  had  taken  him  out  of 
himself,  which  had  given  him  the  ideal  of  God's 
rich,  saving  health  and  the  abundant  life  of  God's 
Son,  which  had  made  religion  an  affair  of  the  whole 

[173] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

man  and  of  all  the  life  of  man,  and  not  ascetic,  sacer- 
dotal, concentric,  he  might  have  had  the  joy  which  he 
so  unsuccessfully  sought.  Of  his  first  visit  to  England, 
Father  Gardner  tells  us: 

''He  could  not  endure  the  cold,  stilted  church 
services  then  in  vogue.  He  used  to  betake  himself 
regularly  to  a  small  Baptist  chapel  down  a  back  street. 
The  simple  and  hearty  devotion  of  the  people  and  the 
earnestness  of  the  preacher  appealed  to  him,  and  he 
had,  of  course,  no  consciousness  of  the  meaning  of 
the  Christian  Church  as  a  spiritual  body." 

He  came  later  to  a  very  high  notion  of  the  Church, 
but  perhaps  that  did  not  compensate  for  his  missing 
the  simple,  hearty  devotion  and  earnestness  which 
his  heart  had  longed  for  in  London.  It  would  seem, 
too,  that  his  life  diminished  rather  than  increased 
in  its  effective  power.  Dr.  Hooper  speaks  of  knowing 
of  only  one  conversion  "as  having  been  due  to  his 
efforts  during  this  last  period  of  his  life,"  while  the 
earlier  evangelical  years  were  marked  by  the  winning 
of  some  of  the  most  remarkable  converts  of  the 
Indian  church. 

There  is  no  doubt  about  Goreh's  saintly  character. 
He  was  a  saint  of  the  type  which  is  produced  by  the 
imperfect  mingling  of  a  philosophic  Indian  personality 
with  the  sacerdotal  and  sacramental  type  of  the 
Christian  spirit,  and  yet  he  was  a  real  saint.  Mr. 
Hill,  who  knew  him  well,  says  of  him: 

Our  dear  brother  Nehemiah  was  shy  and  reserved,  diffi- 
dent and  humble  in  an  extreme  degree.  His  mild  and  gentle 
manner;  his  profound  and  lustrous  eyes,  which  seemed  to 
reflect  the  light  of  the  invisible  world  rather  than  the  faint 

[•74] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

gleam  of  this  world's  lights;  his  very  presence,  seemed  to 
speak  of  the  things  of  the  Spirit,  to  breathe  forth  faith  and 
hope  and  charity.  It  was  impossible  not  to  feel  you  had  seen 
a  saint.  First  impressions  are  strong,  and  that — my  first — 
interview  with  the  father  made  the  most  vivid  impression 
upon  my  mind.  I  have  always  associated  with  it  the  Unes  in 
the  ''Lyra  ApostoUca": 

I  dreamed  that,  with  a  passionate  complaint, 
I  wished  me  born  amid  God's  deeds  of  might, 
And  envied  those  who  saw  the  presence  bright 
Of  gifted  prophet  and  strong-hearted  saint, 
Whom  my  heart  loves,  and  fancy  strives  to  paint. 
I  turned,  when  straight  a  stranger  met  my  sight, 
Came  as  my  guest,  and  did  a  while  unite 
His  lot  with  mine,  and  live  without  restraint. 
Courteous  he  was,  and  grave — so  meek  in  mien, 
It  seems  untrue,  or  told  a  purpose  weak; 
Yet  in  mood,  he  could  with  aptness  speak, 
Or  with  stern  force,  or  show  of  feehngs  keen, 
Marking  deep  craft,  methought,  or  hidden  pride: 
Then  came  a  voice — "St.  Paul  is  at  thy  side!" 

But  many  questions  arise  in  our  tninds  as  we  study 
the  interesting  personality  who  has  been  before  us. 
Was  his,  after  all,  a  typical  Indian  mind?  Was  his 
nature  freely  wrought  upon  by  the  pure  spirit  of 
Christ,  or  was  it  coerced,  oppressed,  deflected,  stifled 
in  any  way?  Did  he  really  understand  India's  need, 
or  what  it  is  that  Christ  came  to  do  for  the  world? 
Is  there  not  a  far  more  catholic  interpretation  of 
Christianity  than  that  which  he  called  by  this  name? 
Is  even  the  best  Hindu  philosophy,  after  all,  a  prep- 
aration for  Christianity?  Did  it  prepare  Nilakantha 
Goreh?  Is  not  Father  Benson's  word  proved  to  be 
true   that   ''every  point  of  difference  between   the 

[175] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

nebulous  mysticism  of  Hindu  philosophy  and  the 
solidity  of  Christian  mysteries  must  be  purified  seven 
times  in  the  fire  of  an  intense  experience  before  it 
can  shine  out  with  the  purity  of  the  Word  of  God,  free 
from  all  the  dross  of  earthly  imagination." 

After  all,  is  not  such  a  Hfe  story  as  this  renewed 
evidence  of  the  human  need  for  such  a  delivering 
conviction,  such  an  emancipation  of  life  from  scruple 
and  legaHsm  into  infinite  joy  as  Luther  recovered  for 
the  world  when  he  brought  back  Paul's  doctrine  of 
justification  by  faith  from  the  sacerdotal  jurisdiction 
into  which  it  had  fallen?  Even  for  India  we  are  sure 
that  the  whole  joyous  New  Testament  gospel,  rich 
with  the  treasure  and  human  reality  and  divine  grace 
which  neither  the  fathers  nor  any  other  teachers 
have  ever  been  able  to  handle  without  some  abridge- 
ment, is  the  only  gospel,  and  that  gospel  must  be 
something  inclusive  of  all  our  present  interpretations, 
and  greater  than  they,  if  it  is  to  take  the  Hfe  of  India 
up  into  itself  and  perfect  and  complete  and  satisfy  it. 

He  was  a  unique  personality,  and  as  a  witness  to  the  truth 
of  Christianity  drawn  from  the  highest  caste  of  subtle-minded, 
thoughtful  Brahmans,  it  will  be  difficult,  and  perhaps  im- 
possible, to  replace  him. 


This  was  Sir  Monier  Williams'  estimate  of  him. 
He  was  a  good  man  and  a  useful  man.  He  was 
indeed,  as  Sir  Monier  WilHams  has  said,  a  unique 
man.  But  he  will  be  replaced,  and  while  there  will 
always  be  room  in  the  Indian  church  for  men  like 
him,  the  problem  of  fitting  Christianity  to  Indian 

[176] 


NEHEMIAH  GOREH 

spiritual  experience,  of  naturalizing  Christian  truth 
in  the  Indian  mind,  must  await  a  larger  and  richer  and 
truer  answer  than  it  found  in  this  true  and  humble 
spirit  who  sought  for  his  peace  and  found  it  not 
until  he  came  at  last  in  the  quiet  of  the  evening  to  the 
rest  that  remaineth  for  the  children  of  God. 


[177] 


STUDY  FIVE 


[179] 


David  Trumbull 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 


AND  THE  PROBLEMS 
OF  THE  FOREIGN  COMMUNITY  AND  RE- 
LIGIOUS    LIBERTY 


Six  years  before  the  courageous  but  pitiful  death 
of  Captain  Allen  Gardner  in  Terra  del  Fuego,  when 
he  was  still  busy  with  his  missionary  researches  in 
South  American  lands  and  with  his  advocacy  of  work 
for  these  countries  among  the  churches  of  Great 
Britian,  a  call  was  issued  by  the  Foreign  Evangelical 
Society  for  a  man  to  go  to  the  South  American  coast, 
then  without  a  single  evangelical  missionary.  In 
response  to  this  call  David  Trumbull  offered  himself, 
and  was  sent  out  to  Valparaiso,  to  begin  a  long  career 
of  forty-four  years  of  missionary  ministry,  which 
made  him  one  of  the  best-beloved  and  most  influential 
men  in  South  America,  and  which  enabled  him  to 
render  to  his  Master,  his  adopted  country  and  to  the 
world  a  unique  and  abiding  service. 

Trumbull  sprang  from  some  of  the  oldest  and  best 
family  stock  to  be  found  in  America.  His  first  Amer- 
ican ancestors  came  over  in  the  "Mayflower" — John 
Alden  and  "that  Puritan  maiden,  Priscilla,"  whom 
Longfellow  has  immortalized.  His  great-grandfather, 
Jonathan  Trumbull,  from  whom  the  typical  American 

[,8i] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

character  has  received  its  personification  in  "Brother 
Jonathan,"  was  governor  of  Connecticut  during  the 
Revolutionary  War  and  George  Washington's  con- 
stant counselor  and  trusted  friend.  The  originaHty 
and  persistence  and  zest  of  character  which  made 
Jonathan  Trumbull  a  steadfast,  resourceful  and 
exhilarating  mainstay  of  Washington  and  of  his 
country  in  its  darkest  hours,  were  characteristic  also 
of  his  great-grandson.  The  family  Hne  was  full  of 
great  and  useful  men,  including  John  Trumbull,  the 
painter,  and,  in  one  of  its  collateral  branches  and 
contemporaneous  with  David,  Dr.  Hammond  Trum- 
bull, our  most-learned  scholar,  and  Henry  Clay 
Trumbull,  one  of  our  greatest  Civil  War  chaplains 
and  religious  teachers.  David  Trumbull  was  happy 
in  the  glory  of  this  ancestry,  and  it  pleased  him  to 
gather  notes  and  stories  of  his  people,  which  he  suc- 
ceeded in  doing  as  far  back  as  the  year  1640.  His 
daughter  tells  of  his  dehght  upon  discovering  evidence 
while  at  home  on  a  furlough  that  the  only  Trumbull 
ancestor  who  had  been  charged  with  illiteracy  had 
written  his  own  will.  He  spent  some  time  trying  to 
clear  the  family  line  of  this  disgrace,  and  when  he  had 
secured  the  evidence  he  came  home  dancing  like  a 
schoolboy.  No  one,  however,  would  have  accepted 
more  humbly  than  he  the  solemn  but  playful  doctrine 
of  his  kinsman,  Henry  Clay  Trumbull,  who  wrote  in 
his  sermon  on  "Our  Duty  to  Make  the  Past  a  Success" : 

As  to  your  family,  my  young  friend,  if  you  are  doing  more 
nobly  than  your  grandfather  did,  you  may  well  rejoice  that 
he  lived  an  honored  life;  but  it  were  better  for  you  to  have  been 
a  bushman  of  South  Africa,  and  improved  all  your  privileges 

[182] 


DAVID   TRUMBULL 

and  opportunities,  than  to  belong  to  one  of  the  best  old  fami- 
lies of  Massachusetts  or  Virginia  and  not  make  a  gain  on  its 
record.  The  question  is,  not  whether  you  are  proud  of  your 
grandfather,  but  whether  your  grandfather  would  be  proud 
of  you.  It  is  a  good  thing  to  be  in  a  family  line  which  had 
a  fine  start  long  ago,  and  has  been  and  still  is  improving, 
generation  by  generation.  It  is  a  sad  thing  to  be  in  a  family 
line  where  the  best  men  and  women  were  in  former  genera- 
tions. 

David  Trumbull's  spirit  was  so  sunny  and  natural 
and  true  that  any  false  pride  either  in  ancestry  or  in 
himself  was  a  moral  impossibility.  Nevertheless 
the  great  lives  that  lay  behind  him  never  flowered  out 
into  anything  greater  or  richer  than  he. 

He  was  born  in  Elizabeth,  New  Jersey,  November 
1, 1819.  The  family  home,  however,  was  in  Connect- 
icut, and  thither  his  father,  John  Trumbull,  returned, 
so  that  when  David  went  out  to  Chile,  it  was  from 
Colchester.  For  a  while  after  his  early  school  days 
he  was  employed  in  a  store  in  New  York,  and  in  later 
years  was  accustomed  to  refer  playfully  to  his  "com- 
mercial experience."  His  thoughts  were,  however, 
turned  toward  the  ministry,  and  he  entered  Yale 
College  and  was  graduated  in  1842.  He  was  a  class- 
mate of  Hammond  Trumbull  and  also  of  James 
Hadley,  the  eminent  Greek  scholar  and  the  father 
of  the  present  president  of  Yale.  One  who  knew  him 
in  college  wrote: 

We  cannot  refrain  from  alluding  to  what  we  ourselves 
remember  of  the  impression  that  he  made  upon  those  who 
came  in  contact  with  him.  In  all  that  he  said  or  did  there 
was  displayed  a  certain  nobility  of  character  which  was  the 

[183] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

more  attractive  as  it  seemed  so  natural  to  him.  He  had  a 
rich  vein  of  humor;  and  we  will  add — as  it  seems  to  have  been 
a  characteristic  that  was  often  made  a  subject  of  remark 
wherever  he  went  during  all  his  life — his  face  wore  a  pecu- 
liarly joyous  expression  which  was  quite  remarkable,  and 
gave  an  additional  charm  to  the  genial  smile  with  which 
he  always  greeted  those  to  whom  he  spoke.  Yet  the  im- 
pression which  he  gave  to  all  was  that  of  a  man  of  marked 
independence  of  character,  and  no  one  could  even  then  have 
doubted  that  he  possessed,  and  would  retain  through  hfe, 
the  full  courage  of  his  convictions.^ 

Just  v^hat  he  was  in  college  he  remained  all  his  life, 
with  the  added  enrichment  of  the  years. 

From  Yale  Trumbull  went  to  Princeton  Theological 
Seminary,  where  he  was  graduated  in  the  class  of 
1845  with  John  B.  French,  who  went  as  one  of  the 
early  missionaries  to  China.  This  same  year  he 
heard  the  plea  of  the  Foreign  Evangelical  Society, 
which  was  afterwards  merged  in  The  American  and 
Foreign  Christian  Union,  and  accepted  the  com- 
mission to  go  out  to  Valparaiso  to  preach,  first  to 
seafaring  men,  and  thus  to  prepare  the  way  for  Chris- 
tian work  on  shore  in  English  and  in  Spanish  as  rapidly 
as  possible.     He  wrote  in  his  private  journal  in  March, 

1845: 

"It  seems  as  though  a  field  was  opened  there, 
and  in  some  respects  as  though  I  am  fitted  to  enter 
and  till  it,  and  scattering  seed,  to  wait  patiently  for 
God  to  give  the  increase." 

This  was  his  call.  He  did  not  wait  for  any  portents 
or  magic  or  for  unreasoned  moods  which  might  be 
supposed  to  be  more  trustworthy  than  the  facts  of 

'  In  the  "New  Englander  and  Yale  Review"  for  June,  1889. 

[184] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

the  world  and  the  calm  thoughts  of  his  own  mind. 
A  great  need  which  no  one  was  meeting  and  which  he 
could  with  God's  help  meet — this  was  all  that  he 
needed  as  a  missionary  call.  'Though  he  was  en- 
dowed with  those  quahties  which  would  have  made 
him  a  shining  Kght  among  his  contemporaries  at  home," 
wrote  Dr.  Ellinwood,  who  knew  him  intimately  for 
many  years,  ''he  early  laid  his  plans  for  a  more  self- 
denying  work,  in  some  respects  a  lonely  and  isolated 
work,  on  the  west  coast  of  South  America,  because  he 
felt  that  morally  and  spiritually  that  long  coast  Hne 
was  without  one  beacon  of  evangeHcal  light."  A 
similar  call  is  waiting  for  thousands  of  men  to  similar 
neglected  fields.     But  where  are  the  similar  men? 

He  sailed  for  Valparaiso  in  the  ship  "Mississippi." 
On  the  voyage  out  he  preached  regularly  on  the 
Sabbath,  and  his  son-in-law  tells  us: 

His  journal  of  the  voyage  contains  ejaculatory  prayers 
showing  how  he  was  seeking  a  perfect  patience  and  conse- 
cration. The  indifference  to  religion  among  those  on  board 
moved  him  to  labor  and  pray  for  their  salvation.  On  being 
told  during  that  long  voyage  that  he  was  held  in  esteem  by  all 
on  board,  he  wrote:  "I  thank  God  for  it  and  hope  he  will 
help  me  hereafter  to  be  a  faithful  Christian  and  let  men  see 
that  I  beHeve  and  practice  what  I  say.  And  O  my  Father, 
may  I  enjoy  the  privilege  of  winning  souls,  or  some  soul, 
to  Christ." 

There  is  an  interesting  contrast  between  this  voyage 
and  that  of  David  Livingstone  to  Africa  just  five 
years  before,  when  Livingstone  also  touched  on  the 
South  American  coast  on  his  way. 

Sundays  were  not  times  of  refreshing,  at  least  not  beyond 

['85] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

his  closet.  "The  captain  rigged  out  the  church  on  Sundays, 
and  we  had  service;  but,  I  being  a  poor  preacher  and  the 
chaplain  addressing  them  all  as  Christians  already,  no  moral 
influence  was  exerted,  and  even  had  there  been  any  on  the 
Sabbath,  it  would  have  been  neutrahzed  by  the  week-day 
conduct.  In  fact,  no  good  was  done."  Neither  at  Rio,  nor 
on  board  ship,  nor  anywhere  could  good  be  done  without 
the  element  of  personal  character.  This  was  Livingstone's 
strong  conviction  to  the  end  of  his  life. 

In  his  first  letter  to  the  directors  of  the  London  Mis- 
sionary Society  he  tells  them  that  he  had  spent  most  of  his 
time  at  sea  in  the  study  of  theology,  and  that  he  was  deeply 
grieved  to  say  that  he  knew  of  no  spiritual  good  having  been 
done  in  the  case  of  anyone  on  board  the  ship.^ 

It  was  different  with  the  sunny-hearted,  companion- 
able Trumbull.  His  notebook  has  many  entries 
showing  his  hopeful,  purposeful  character.  He  ex- 
presses himself  as  much  pleased  with  some  sayings  of 
Frederick  the  Great,  among  them  this:  "It  is  no  longer 
requisite  I  should  live  unless  I  can  live  and  work. 
These  are  sentiments  worthy  of  this  great  man,  and 
also  the  key  to  his  greatness.  Fit  for  the  adoption 
of  every  man,  be  his  station  what  it  may,  how  much 
more  fit  for  the  Christian,  who  has  so  much  work  to 
do  and  who  can  only  live  the  Hfe  to  which  he  is  called 
by  doing  constantly  and  well."  On  thinking  of  the 
homeland  and  its  attractions  he  said,  "May  God 
assist  me  to  a  pure  purpose  of  being  his,  and  sincerely 
asking  where  I  can  do  the  most  good;  and  of  going 
freely."  At  the  end  of  the  voyage  he  wrote,  "Now 
nearing  my  field,  may  I  be  aided  to  be  faithful  in  it, 
remembering  that  I  am  to  give  account."    How  many 

•  Blaikie,  "The  Personal  Life  of  David  Livingstone." 

[i86] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

more  men  would  be  going  out  to  the  foreign  field  to- 
day and  into  neglected  sections  of  human  need  at 
home  if  they,  too,  had  *'a  pure  purpose  of  being 
God's  and  sincerely  asking  where  they  could  do  the 
most  good  and  of  going  freely"? 

The  ''Mississippi"  entered  Valparaiso  Bay  on  Christ- 
mas Day,  1845,  2-nd  David  Trumbull  at  the  age  of 
twenty-six  stepped  ashore  to  begin  his  work.  He 
was  at  once  kindly  received,  as  he  was  sure  to  be  al- 
ways and  everywhere.  It  was  a  lonely  and  discourag- 
ing situation  which  he  found.  There  was  an  Anglican 
consular  chaplain,  with  whom  he  at  once  made 
friends,  but  his  congregation  was  small,  and  it  was 
all  that  there  was.  There  was  no  missionary  work 
whatever  for  the  Chilean  people.  Valparaiso  itself 
was  a  small,  unattractive  place.  ''There  was  not 
a  tree  in  sight  save  a  cactus  on  a  hilltop.  The 
houses  were  so  scattered  as  to  make  little  impression 
and  one  would  say.  Where  is  the  city?"  The  city 
was  two  towns,  the  port  with  its  customhouse,  stores, 
Plaza  and  Intendencia,  and  the  Almendral  with  its 
miles  of  gardens.  The  main  part  of  the  present  busi- 
ness city  was  then  sea  margin  which  has  since  been 
filled  in.  There  was  Httle  or  no  pavement,  no  gas  or 
street  lamps  of  any  kind,  no  water  supply  but  by 
carriers,  and  only  one  street,  unsafe  at  night,  from 
the  port  down  to  the  Almendral.  Dr.  Trumbull 
Hved  to  see  a  great  modern  city  grow  up,  with  every 
improvement  and  convenience,  and  in  that  growth  no 
man  had  a  larger  part  than  he. 

Dr.  Trumbull's  first  work  was  to  be  for  sailors. 
Valparaiso  was  in  those  days,  as  it  is  now,  a  great 

[187] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

harbor,  and  perhaps  then  even  more  than  now  there 
was  opportunity  for  reaching  sailors  of  all  lands  who 
were  in  the  city  while  their  ships  were  refitting. 
There  were  whaling  ships  from  New  England,  off  on 
their  three-year  cruises,  which  came  back  to  the 
Sandwich  Islands  or  to  Valparaiso  to  prepare  for  the 
next  season's  fishing.  After  the  discovery  of  gold  in 
CaHfornia  the  number  of  ships  and  sailors  stopping 
at  Valparaiso  on  the  way  going  and  coming  greatly 
increased.  In  1850  nearly  fifteen  hundred  commercial 
vessels,  with  fifteen  thousand  persons  on  them,  an- 
chored at  Valparaiso.  These  vessels  represented 
"nearly  thirty  different  nations,"  says  Dr.  H.  Clay 
Trumbull.  ''Yet  the  British  and  Americans  had 
more  than  all  the  others  put  together.  Vessels  of 
war  were  in  addition  to  these  commercial  vessels. 
So  it  will  be  seen  that  the  field  of  labor  was  impor- 
tant for  a  missionary  and  chaplain.  Besides  those 
actually  on  the  vessels  there  were  always  more  or  less 
sick  in  the  hospital  from  the  countries  represented  by 
the  vessels.  And  there  were  others  of  them  in  the 
city  prison.  Dr.  Trumbull  had  those  sick  and  in 
prison  to  minister  to."  It  was  a  great  sailor  parish 
to  which  he  had  come.  He  held  his  first  service  on  the 
ship  which  had  brought  him,  raising  the  Bethel  flag 
on  the  "Mississippi"  on  Sunday,  January  4,  1846,  and 
preaching  to  forty  persons  his  first  sermon  on  II  Cor. 
4  : 4,  "In  whom  the  god  of  this  world  hath  blinded 
the  minds  of  them  which  beHeve  not,  lest  the  light 
of  the  glorious  gospel  of  Christ,  who  is  the  image  of 
God,  should  shine  unto  them." 
As  the  years  passed  by  Dr.  Trumbull's  work  grew 
[188] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

in  range  and  variety,  but  all  his  life  long  he  was  the 
friend  and  minister  of  sailors.  A  Bethel  ship,  called 
the  "Hopeful,"  attractive  and  commodious,  Hke  a 
steam  yacht  in  appearance,  was  secured  in  1885  for 
service  in  the  harbor  and  on  the  sea.  The  spirit  in 
which  he  began  his  work  made  it  sure  both  that  no 
need  of  men  in  Valparaiso  once  seen  should  ever  be 
forgotten  and  that  the  need  of  no  class  of  men  should 
be  overlooked.  His  was  no  mere  perfunctory  or 
professional  service.  He  was  himself  in  the  truest 
sense  a  man  of  God,  and  the  love  of  God  and  the 
greatness  of  God  were  ever  upon  him,  making  him 
tender  toward  men  and  humble  before  Him  whom  he 
served.  On  his  twenty-seventh  birthday,  Sunday, 
November  i,  1846,  before  he  had  been  quite  a  year 
in  his  field,  he  wrote  this  prayer  with  some  prefa- 
tory words  of  self-examination: 

And  yet  I  am  spared.  Why?  I  think  of  Payson,  of  Dr. 
Grant,  McCheyne  and  Stewart — men  ripe,  earnest,  prayer- 
ful, mighty  in  the  Scriptures,  yet  called  away,  while  I,  crude, 
dull  and  weak,  remain.  I  have  thought  God  will  not  take 
me  away  yet;  but  why  not,  when  he  has  taken  them?  Why 
from  the  middle  of  their  fields  where  they  were  gathering 
sheaves — while  I  have  hardly  brought  together  my  straws? 
But  now  I  must  begin.  This  may  be  the  last  of  my  ministry; 
even  of  my  Hfe.  I  have  to-day  felt,  as  I  am  not  wont  in 
prayer,  a  nearness  to  God  and  a  sense  of  sin  and  of  deficiency 
such  as  I  have  long  been  without.  And  I  have  made  promise 
to  God  that  henceforth  I  will  obey  him  perfectly.  And  to 
keep  it  more  in  mind,  here  with  pen  enter  my  promise  and 
prayer  for  strength  to  keep  it. 

My  God,  I  will  begin  a  new  life  with  this  new  year — first, 
to  do  all  my  duties;  second,  to  shun  any  degree  or  sort  of  sin. 
I  will  aim  to  please  thee  every  day  forward.     I  will  set  out 

[189] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

not  for  a  partial  but  for  an  entire  obedience,  to  love  thee  with 
all  my  heart  and  my  neighbor  as  myself.  And  then,  further, 
in  my  pubHc  Hfe  as  a  minister  of  the  gospel  I  will  study  thy 
Word  and  all  truth  where  it  can  be  found,  in  candor,  with 
prayer;  and  will  apply  myself  to  find  out  suitable  language, 
figures  and  thoughts,  that  others  may  be  taught  by  my 
efforts.     And  in  private  visiting  I  will  try  to  be  faithful. 

Thou  art  my  Maker,  my  Owner,  my  Redeemer  and  Puri- 
fier— I  own  the  right  and  will  aim  to  feel  that  I  am  in  no  way 
my  own.     I  devote  myself,  tongue,  hands,  head,  affections, 
imagination  and  memory  to  thy  service.     But  what  is  all  this? 
Only  bringing  again  what  I  received  from  thee,  and  have  mis- 
used, abused  and  corrupted.     The  heart  I  offer  thee  I  have 
injured  and  have  now  need  to  ask  thee  to  repair  the  harm  I 
,    have  done  myself.     Accept  me  then  with  all  my  powers,  not 
v^l    as  a  gift,  but  as  a  favor  to  myself;  fit  me  to  serve  thee  and 
^   then  make  use  of  me — any  way  thou  shalt  please.     Use  me 
to  live  and  work,  or  to  lie  down  and  die — I  put  myself  at  thy 
disposal;  do  just  thy  pleasure,  only  sanctify  and  save  me. 

If  in  this  spirit  he  wrought  for  the  sailors  who  came 
and  went  through  Valparaiso,  he  still  saw  this  work 
only  as  the  beginning.  He  recognized  that  his  duty 
lay  to  the  whole  foreign  community.  There  was 
need  of  a  church  on  the  land  not  for  the  sailors  only, 
but  for  the  foreign  merchants  who  even  at  this  early 
period  constituted  a  large  and  important  element. 
He  found  some  devoted  Christian  men  in  this  class. 
Indeed,  the  first  Protestant  services  held  in  Valparaiso 
were  conducted  by  an  English  merchant,  Mr.  Sewell, 
in  a  private  house.  Then  Anglican  consular  chap- 
lains were  sent  out  and  Trumbull  found  one  holding 
services  in  a  private  chapel  when  he  arrived.  He  and 
the  chaplain  became  warm  friends,  and  this  tradition 
of  friendship  between  the  Anglican  clergymen  and 

[190] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

the  successors  of  Dr.  Trumbull  continues  to  the 
present  day.  As  soon  as  possible  he  gathered  those 
who  were  not  related  to  the  Anghcan  service  into  a 
Union  Church  which  he  organized  with  fifteen  mem- 
bers, including  himself,  on  September  5,  1847. 

Tradition  says  that  he  preached  his  first  sermon 
on  shore  in  the  printing  estabhshment  of  ^'El  Mer- 
curio,"  a  ''printer's  horse"  serving  as  the  pulpit, 
while  the  small  congregation  used  rolls  of  paper  as 
seats.  After  that  a  warehouse  was  rented  in  the 
city.  This  was  small,  accommodating  at  most  about 
fifty  persons;  and  so  dark  that  often  in  the  daytime 
it  was  necessary  to  light  candles  and  whale-oil  lamps. 
In  1854  the  Union  Church  purchased  the  site  for  its 
first  building.  This  was  completed  in  1855,  and  dedi- 
cated in  April  of  the  following  year.  This  building 
was  historic,  for  it  was,  as  Dr.  Trumbull  used  to  say, 
the  first  Protestant  church  erected  in  South  America, 
or  on  the  West  Coast  from  Cahfornia  to  Cape  Horn. 
As  the  walls  of  the  new  building  began  to  rise  there 
was  considerable  excitement  in  ecclesiastical  and 
government  circles.  The  municipal  authorities  gave 
peremptory  orders  to  stop  the  work;  while  the  govern- 
ment sent  word  to  the  church  officials  that  any  at- 
tempt to  hold  service  would  be  prevented,  if  neces- 
sary, even  by  police  force.  But  Trumbull  came  of 
fighting  stock,  and  he  was  well  backed  up  by  Britishers 
who  never  know  when  they  are  beaten.  Under  one 
pretext  or  another  the  work  went  on,  slowly  and  al- 
most imperceptibly,  until  at  last  the  building  was 
completed.  Then  the  government  positively  refused 
to  allow  services  to  be  held.     Six  months  of  negotia- 

[■91] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

tion  resulted  in  a  compromise,  and  the  government 
gave  its  consent  on  condition  that  the  Union  Church 
people  build  a  wooden  fence  high  enough  to  intercept 
the  view  of  the  building  from  the  street,  and  that  the 
choir  should  sing  so  softly  that  passers-by  should  not 
be  attracted  to  the  heretical  worship  within.  As  an 
indication  of  the  temper  of  the  times  it  may  be 
added  that  several  Chilean  ladies  married  to  EngKsh- 
men  expressed  a  desire  to  attend  the  Protestant  serv- 
ice with  their  husbands;  and  that  they  were  notified 
that  if  they  persisted  in  their  attempt  the  authorities 
would  be  compelled  to  use  the  poHce  to  prevent  such 
a  desecration  of  Chilean  soil. 

Once  in  possession  of  its  own  building,  and  with 
regularly  conducted  services.  Union  Church  began 
to  grow  in  wealth  and  numbers.  A  new  and  larger 
edifice  was  erected  in  1869,  which — again  greatly 
enlarged — serves  the  Union  congregation  still.  Many 
young  men,  plunged  into  as  great  a  work  as  Dr. 
Trumbull  had  before  him  among  the  sailors,  would 
have  been  timid  about  undertaking  such  a  project  as 
the  Union  Church,  or  would  have  regarded  the  mercan- 
tile community  as  outside  their  direct  responsibility. 
But  Dr.  Trumbull  had  the  gift  of  making  friends  of  any- 
one, and  he  saw  that  the  permanent  foreign  commu- 
nity had  deep  rehgious  needs  of  its  own  which  should 
be  met,  that  its  support  of  his  work  for  sailors  should 
be  secured,  and  that  its  influence  upon  Chile  needed 
to  be  made  in  the  highest  sense  Christian.  All  over 
the  world  there  are  such  communities  as  these.  Too 
often  men  and  women  have  drifted  out  to  them  from 
the  homelands  whose  past  records  have  been  shaded, 

[192] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

and  while  many  more  have  gone  of  the  best  ideals 
and  the  highest  character,  they  have  had  to  meet 
the  down  pull  of  the  other  element  and  to  withstand 
the  debihtating  and  demoralizing  gravitation  of  the 
native  atmosphere.  In  many  fields  the  result  is 
a  composite  sentiment  which  looks  askance  at  the 
missionary  representatives  whom  it  meets,  while  the 
missionaries,  on  their  side,  often  feel  that  to  be  in- 
volved with  the  foreign  community  is  to  compromise 
their  own  direct  work.  Social  divergences  also  easily 
grow  up  between  people  of  very  different  tempera- 
ments and  aims.  The  result  has  been  that  in  many 
port  cities  a  fixed  hostility  has  settled  down  between 
the  great  body  of  the  merchant  community  and  the 
missionary  body,  with  much  criticism  on  each  side; 
and  often,  whatever  the  social  issue  may  be,  there  has 
been  too  much  moral  divergence  to  allow  of  concord 
and  good  will.  Dr.  Trumbull  took  hold  of  the  con- 
ditions in  Valparaiso  with  a  firm  and  winsome  grasp. 
The  best  men  in  the  community  were  captivated  by 
the  bright,  direct,  consecrated  personaHty  which  had 
come  among  them,  and  as  years  passed  by  and  as  his 
influence  grew  the  whole  community  came  to  feel 
and  respond  to  his  power.  To  this  day  it  bears  his 
impress.  It  is  true  that  it  was  fortunate  in  number- 
ing among  its  members  some  English  and  Scotch 
merchants  whose  godly  character  and  upright  prin- 
ciples erected  a  standard  for  the  whole  community, 
but  to  no  one  as  much  as  to  Dr.  Trumbull  does  Val- 
paraiso owe  the  unusually  high  tone  of  its  foreign 
community  to-day  and  its  tradition  of  honor  and 
friendliness  in  the  community  life.     Trumbull's  ca- 

[193] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

reer  shows  what  one  man  of  the  right  type  can  do  in 
fixing  the  character  of  a  whole  settlement. 

Nowhere  has  there  been  more  need  than  in  Chile  of 
such  conserving  work  as  Trumbull  sought  to  do  among 
the  English-speaking  residents.  Chilean  public  Hfe 
is  full  of  British  Protestant  names,  proselytized  to 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  Chile  by  the  influence 
of  social  relationship  or  poHtical  pressure,  or  by  simple 
absorption  in  the  life  of  the  land.  In  1888,  describing 
a  large  Roman  Catholic  meeting  in  Valparaiso,  Trum- 
bull wrote  to  the  Presbyterian  Board: 

In  the  note  of  the  Roman  Catholic  meeting  here  I  have 
left  in  the  names,  not  supposing  they  would  all  be  published, 
but  thinking  it  would  interest  you  to  see  how  many  of  them 
are  English,  Irish,  Scotch  and  American  names;  the  daughters 
of  well-to-do  foreigners,  Protestants  who  have  married  and 
formed  families  here,  that  have  been  brought  up  as  Roman- 
ists. It  is  a  side  light  falling  on  the  question.  How  far 
should  we  seek  to  evangelize  and  retain  for  the  gospel  our 
own  countrymen?  Some  of  the  most  potential  Roman 
Catholic  supporters  here  to-day  are  of  British  origin;  their 
parents  or  grandparents  having  had  no  public  worship  to 
attract  them  have  attended  none,  and  their  wives,  worthy 
and  good  Roman  Catholics,  have  carried  the  children  into 
that  connection,  unless  they  have  gone  into  freethinking. 

It  was  part  of  his  conviction  with  regard  to  this 
work  that  it  should  be  not  denominational,  but  union. 
These  communities  were  not  large  enough  to  maintain 
a  number  of  different  denominational,  agencies.  The 
community  was  one  in  all  its  other  interests  and  ac- 
tivities. It  should  be  one  in  its  religious  hfe.  The 
great  ideal  of  the  missionaries'  work  should  be  not 
the  import  of  British  and  American  denominations, 

[194] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

but  the  creation  of  a  single  national  church  in  the 
land  to  which  the  missionaries  had  come.  These 
seemed  to  him  to  be  convincing  reasons  why  the 
churches  for  English-speaking  foreign  residents  should 
be  union  churches.  There  would  be  some  who, 
through  past  training  and  relationship  or  national 
distinction,  might  prefer  a  church  of  sacramental  or 
liturgical  type  and  the  Anglican  chaplaincies  provided 
for  these,  but  all  others  Trumbull  sought  to  gather 
into  one  Union  Church.  It  was  one  of  the  first  of 
many  such  churches  which  have  grown  up  all  over  the 
world.  And,  indeed,  it  was  one  of  the  first  three  evan- 
geHcal  churches  of  any  kind  to  be  estabHshed  on  the 
Pacific  coast  of  the  Western  Hemisphere. 

As  I  have  already  intimated.  Dr.  Trumbull  was 
interested  in  the  foreign  community  not  only  for  its 
own  sake,  but  also  because  of  the  work  to  be  done 
beyond  it  and  through  it  for  the  Chilean  people.  He 
was  commissioned  to  the  sailors  and  other  foreigners 
in  Valparaiso,  but  from  the  beginning  it  was  the  un- 
derstanding of  the  society  which  sent  him,  as  it  was 
his  own,  that  he  was  in  Chile  for  the  people  of  Chile, 
too.  But  when  he  arrived  there  was  no  rehgious 
access  to  them.  The  government  of  Chile  was  in- 
tensely Roman  Catholic,  and  in  those  days  the  idea 
of  rehgious  Hberty  hardly  existed  in  South  American 
countries.  There  was  not  only  no  religious  liberty, 
there  were  no  free  schools,  no  civil  marriage,  no  inter- 
ment of  Protestants  in  the  cemeteries.  Buried  in 
the  foliage  on  the  side  of  Santa  Lucia,  the  rocky  hill 
in  the  center  of  Santiago  where  Pedro  Valdivia, 
Pizarro's   lieutenant,   intrenched   himself   and   from 

[195] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

which  he  threw  himself  down  with  his  little  handful 
of  one  hundred  and  fifty  adventurers  and  conquered 
Chile,  is  an  old  stone  erected  by  Vicuna  Mackenna, 
when  he  redeemed  Santa  Lucia  from  its  dishonor  as 
a  dumping  ground,  and  made  it  the  ornament  of  the 
city.  It  is  placed  on  a  spot  where,  in  the  old  days  on 
this  hill  of  refuse,  Protestants  were  buried.  There 
was  for  them  no  resting  place  in  sacred  soil.  The 
bodies  were  removed  by  Mackenna,  and  where  they 
lay  he  set  up  a  memorial  bearing  the  inscription,  "To 
the  memory  of  those  exiled  from  heaven  and  earth." 
The  country  was  as  yet  quite  undeveloped  also  in 
the  matter  of  transportation  and  industry.  Before 
Dr.  Trumbull  died  he  looked  out  upon  a  new  Chile  in 
all  these  things.  The  year  he  arrived  WilHam  Wheel- 
wright surveyed  a  railway  line  at  his  own  expense  from 
Valparaiso  to  Santiago.  That  interesting  genius,  hav- 
ing made  a  financial  shipwreck  at  home,  became  the 
great  railroad  builder  of  the  west  coast.  He  inaugu- 
rated steam  navigation  on  the  coast,  suggested  the  use 
of  iron  in  shipbuilding,  laid  out  the  daring  railroad 
from  Mollendo  to  Arequipa,  built  the  first  line  in 
Chile,  from  Caldera  to  Copiapo,  in  1850,  and  laid  out 
the  water  system  for  Valparaiso.  Dr.  Trumbull 
saw  the  railroads  spread  out  over  the  land,  and  the 
telegraph  follow  them,  and  letter  postage  go  down 
from  forty-two  cents  for  a  letter  from  New  York  to 
five  cents.  The  Spanish  Government  recognized  the 
independence  of  Chile  the  year  of  his  arrival,  and 
he  watched  the  poKtical  administration  through  seven 
presidential  administrations  grow  increasingly  steady 
and  secure.    He  saw  the  port  of  Valparaiso  bombarded 

[196] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

by  the  Spanish  fleet  in  1866  when  Chile  sympathized 
with  Peru  in  her  struggle  against  Spain,  and  he  w^atched 
the  war  which  Chile  waged  with  Peru  in  18 79-1 883. 
The  foreign  community  in  Valparaiso  grew  in  his 
time,  though  the  number  of  Americans  diminished, 
and  the  total  population  of  the  city  expanded  from  forty 
thousand  to  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand.  In 
1875  there  were  seventeen  hundred  and  eighty-five 
British,  eleven  hundred  and  thirty-four  Germans  and 
four  hundred  and  twenty-seven  Americans,  while  in 
1895  there  were  twenty-one  hundred  and  fifty-seven 
British,  nineteen  hundred  and  eighty-five  Germans 
and  two  hundred  and  thirteen  Americans.  And  to  the 
last  he  was  interested  in  the  expansion  of  the  land 
through  the  growth  of  its  commerce,  the  development 
of  its  mineral  resources  and  the  opening  up  of  the 
Alpine  regions  of  the  south. 

But  it  was  the  educational  and  religious  advance- 
ment of  the  country  which  was  his  chief  care,  and 
the  changes  which  took  place  in  these  regards  and  in 
effecting  which  he  was  one  of  the  chief  agents,  are 
set  forth  in  an  editorial  in  ''El  Heraldo,"  one  of  the 
Valparaiso  newspapers,  on  the  occasion  of  his  death: 

He  arrived  at  the  time  of  our  awakening  as  a  free  people, 
and  he  came  to  contend  against  the  preconceived  ideas  of  a 
social  condition  which  was  unwilling  to  recognize  the  ex- 
cellence of  any  but  a  single  religious  system,  accepted  only 
from  the  ministers  of  the  state  religion.  Whoever  separated 
himself  from  the  official  religion  was  evil  spoken  of;  and  even 
the  necessities  of  life  were  denied  all  who  did  not  address 
God  in  Latin,  in  temples  consecrated  by  the  hand  of  the 
archbishop  who  had  received  his  authority  in  accordance 
with  the  original  article,  number  five,  of  the  constitution. 

[197] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

In  consequence  of  this  it  was  that  the  appearance  of  Dr. 
Trumbull  was  an  offense,  and  his  propaganda  sounded  as  the 
echo  of  a  curse.  But  he,  far  from  being  intimidated,  began 
his  work  quietly,  patiently,  constantly  and  laboriously. 
He  continued  it,  armed  as  he  was  with  great  perseverance 
and  unquestioned  abihty.  To  it  he  dedicated  all  his  time, 
beginning  by  the  example  of  his  upright  and  spotless  life, 
upholding  it  in  the  home  and  at  the  side  of  the  grave,  in  the 
church  and  in  the  school,  in  the  street  and  in  the  press,  with 
the  constancy  of  dropping  water  and  the  self-consecration 
of  an  apostle.  The  fruit  of  his  labor  was  later  on  incorpo- 
rated in  successive  streams  of  civil,  social  and  religious  reforms. 
The  body  of  a  Protestant  ceased  to  be  a  prey  for  the  fowls  of 
the  air  and  the  beasts  of  the  field.  The  Protestant  came  to 
have  equal  rights  with  him  who  professed  the  Roman  CathoHc 
faith,  to  have  his  churches,  his  burying  ground,  civil  rights 
and  public  regard.  To  bring  this  about,  and  to  implant  in 
public  conscience  the  tenets  of  religious  tolerance  and  respect 
toward  the  religious  beliefs  of  others,  it  was  necessary  to 
reorganize  everything  from  the  poHtical  senate  to  the  pulpit, 
from  the  press  to  private  societies;  to  make  use  of  keen 
polemics,  yet  with  the  courtesy  of  a  man  of  the  world;  to  en- 
dure, to  suffer,  to  contend  and  to  wait  till  more  than  forty 
years  had  passed.  What  must  not  Dr.  Trumbull  have  en- 
dured and  suffered  during  all  this  time!  What  he  brought 
about  was  a  revolution  in  the  country;  and  he  was,  of  neces- 
sity, a  revolutionist  before  he  was  able  to  walk  our  streets 
saluted  with  respect,  esteemed  and  loved  by  all  as  a  man  of 
worth  in  the  best  and  highest  sense  of  the  word. 

In  our  times  of  great  public  distress  he  gave  us  the  benefit 
of  his  prayers,  his  sustaining  faith,  his  charity,  words  of 
counsel  and  of  comfort.  More  than  one  free  school  owes  its 
existence  to  his  initiative.  In  the  anxious  days  of  cholera 
he  gave  us  of  his  time,  his  energy,  his  funds,  and  he  was  then 
seen  forming  measures  of  relief  for  the  stricken  and  their  poor 
families  in  conjunction  with  the  official  head  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  in  this  town.  Who  would  have  thought 
this  possible  forty  years  ago? 

[198] 


II 

What  did  Dr.  Trumbull  do  to  effect  so  great  a 
change? 

One  of  his  first  efforts,  apart  from  his  preaching 
and  his  friendliness,  was  a  school  which  he  and  his 
wife,  a  niece  of  Professor  Fitch  of  Yale,  whom  he  had 
married  in  1850,  conducted  for  the  education  of  girls. 
The  school  was  soon  complained  of,  but  the  Committee 
of  Examination  commended  its  Christian  method, 
and  its  influence  extended  and  endured.  It  was  given 
up  in  1856,  but  Dr.  Trumbull  continued  to  advocate 
education  as  one  of  the  great  needs  of  the  country. 
The  struggle  was  a  long  one,  however.  In  1872  a 
non-CathoHc  school  was  closed  by  law  in  Valparaiso, 
but  ten  years  later  the  victory  was  won  and  free- 
school  privileges  were  granted  to  the  country. 

He  saw  quickly  that  the  circulation  of  the  Bible  in 
Spanish  would  be  as  effective  an  agency  as  any  which 
could  be  used,  not  only  to  propagate  Christianity 
but  also  to  promote  religious  liberty.  His  first  step 
in  this  direction  was  to  send  to  Santiago  several  boxes 
of  Bibles  and  tracts.  This  was  early  in  1858.  About 
twenty  years  before  this  an  agent  of  the  British  and 
Foreign  Bible  Society  had  sold  a  few  Bibles  in  Chile; 
yet  all  we  know  of  this  work  is  a  pastoral  letter  of  the 
archbishop  in  which  he  thundered  against  the  "devil 
and  his  works,"  and  ordered  the  Bibles  to  be  burned; 
and  this  was  done  publicly  in  the  plaza  of  Quillota. 

The  first  systematic  and  successful  attempt  to 
circulate  the  Scriptures  in  this  country  was  the  work 

[199] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

of  David  Trumbull.  These  Bibles  were  probably 
the  first  exposed  for  sale  in  the  capital,  if  we  except 
a  few  which  were  introduced  as  early  as  182 1  by 
James  Thomson,  who  used  the  Scriptures  as  a  text- 
book in  his  schools.  In  a  letter  which  appeared  in 
March,  1858,  the  archbishop  prohibited  the  study  of 
the  Bible  under  the  severest  penalties  of  the  church. 
The  Bible  was  declared  ''fraudulent,"  "heretical," 
"dangerous,"  and  every  Chilean  was  forbidden  to 
have  a  copy  in  his  possession,  much  more  to  read 
or  study  it.  Trumbull  answered  this  letter.  The 
archbishop  then  retired,  leaving  Reverend  Francisco 
Garfias  to  defend  the  interests  of  the  church;  but 
after  an  interchange  of  several  letters  on  both  sides, 
Mr.  Garfias  withdrew  in  confusion.  This  incident  is 
worthy  of  notice  because  it  was  the  first  skirmish  in  a 
series  of  battles  which  lasted  for  nearly  thirty-five 
years.  In  i860  Dr.  Trumbull,  to  call  him  by  the  title 
he  afterwards  received,  wrote  to  the  British  and 
Foreign  Bible  Society  asking  them  to  send  an  agent  to 
the  coast.  Richard  Confield  arrived  in  Chile  in  1861, 
and  a  few  weeks  after  his  arrival  the  Valparaiso  Bible 
Society  was  organized,  with  Dr.  Trumbull  as  president. 
The  success  of  this  society,  which  lived  for  years  as  an 
independent  organization,  and  which  exists  to-day  as 
a  branch  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  was 
due  in  great  part  to  Dr.  Trumbull.  Up  to  the  time  of 
his  death  this  local  society  put  into  circulation  101,265 
Bibles  and  Testaments,  197,000  reUgious  books,  and 
collected  on  the  coast  about  one  hundred  and  two 
thousand  pesos,  equal  to  about  seventy  thousand  dol- 
lars American  gold. 

[200] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

In  connection  with  this  Bible  work  there  is  an 
incident  which  is  interesting.  Reverend  Father 
Vaughn,  a  brother  of  the  cardinal,  visited  Chile  late 
in  the  seventies.  Discovering  that  few  Chileans 
possessed  copies  of  the  Scriptures,  he  collected  money 
for  the  purpose  of  pubKshing  a  cheap  edition  of  a 
Catholic  New  Testament.  Dr.  Trumbull  helped  him 
secure  the  needed  funds — in  fact,  collected  quite  a 
sum  among  his  own  church  people.  This  was  given 
to  Father  Vaughn  on  condition  that  Dr.  Trumbull 
was  to  receive  a  certain  number  of  copies,  once  the 
edition  came  out.  This  New  Testament,  bearing 
the  authorization  of  the  pope  and  the  archbishop  of 
Chile,  was  printed  in  London  and  afterwards  for- 
warded to  Valparaiso.  For  nearly  a  year  no  trace 
could  be  found  of  the  invoice.  The  ecclesiastical 
authorities  denied  all  knowledge  of  the  books,  but 
they  were  fmally  traced  from  the  customhouse  to 
the  house  of  a  priest,  Mariano  Casanova,  then  ecclesi- 
astical governor  of  Valparaiso  and  afterwards  arch- 
bishop of  Chile.  Once  in  possession  of  this  knowledge, 
Dr.  Trumbull  threatened  to  take  legal  measures  to 
secure  the  number  of  copies  which  belonged  to  him; 
but  before  the  suit  was  instituted  the  books  were 
dehvered  at  the  Bible  store  to  his  order;  and,  as  a 
result  of  his  farsightedness  and  aggressive  energy, 
there  was  put  into  circulation  a  Catholic  edition  of 
the  New  Testament  which  the  Catholic  authorities 
would  fain  have  suppressed  and  which  has  proved 
very  useful  in  evangeHcal  work. 

Like  many  other  missionaries  in  Latin  lands  he 
perceived   also   the   value   of   religious   newspapers. 

[201] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

In  English  he  published  "The  Neighbor,"  afterwards 
"The  Record."  The  first  Protestant  paper  in  Spanish 
was  "La  Piedra,"  and  Dr.  Trumbull  himself  was  the 
editor.  The  first  number  was  pubHshed  in  1869. 
It  was  of  sixteen  small  pages,  and  appeared  at  irregu- 
lar intervals  as  often  as  its  exchequer  and  Dr.  Trum- 
bull's other  duties  permitted.  The  name  was  char- 
acteristic, "La  Piedra,"  that  is,  "The  Rock";  and 
on  the  title-page,  printed  in  bold  type,  were  the  words 
of  Christ  to  Peter,  "Thou  art  Peter,  and  upon  this 
rock  I  will  build  my  church."  The  expenses  of  this 
little  paper  were  paid  by  contributions  collected  by 
Dr.  Trumbull.  The  last  number  appeared  in  1879, 
when  "La  Alianza  Evangelica"  became  the  organ  of 
the  mission.  He  had  to  do  also  with  "El  Heraldo" 
of  Santiago,  and  later  "La  Aurora,"  and  he  pubhshed 
a  sermon  weekly  in  "La  Patria."  These  publications 
spread  the  new  ideas  which  he  brought  far  and  wide. 
He  sent  home  to  the  Board  a  specimen  letter  which 
he  had  received  from  a  society  of  workingmen  who 
had  been  reading  his  sermon  in  "La  Aurora": 

We  make  it  our  duty  to  give  you  our  best  thanks  in  the 
name  of  our  society.  Our  statutes  do  not  allow  the  discus- 
sion of  religion  or  politics  while  in  session,  but  afterwards, 
adjourning,  your  periodical  is  read  and  each  offers  his  remarks 
upon  it. 

Your  holy  mission  is  erelong  to  be  seen  crowned  with  the 
unfading  laurels  of  peace  and  prosperity,  .  .  .  and  the 
faith  will  shine  forth  in  all  its  brilliance,  not  obscured  by 
ignorance  nor  by  fanaticism.  Progress  and  knowledge  are 
advancing  rapidly  and  are  waking  up  minds  that  have  been 
asleep.  Sons  of  the  common  people,  we  from  our  youth 
have  been  educated  in  the  practices  of  Romanism,  and  they 

[202] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

who  know  the  truth  pure  and  spotless  are  very  few;  hence 
it  is  necessary  that  those  apostles  who  try  to  make  it  known 
should  be  unfaltering  in  their  use  of  the  press  in  bringing 
out  their  pubhcations. 

In  these  early  days  and  in  fact,  during  his  whole 
life  Trumbull  was  greatly  interested  in  the  transla- 
tion and  circulation  of  tracts.  Finding  something 
he  thought  might  be  useful,  he  would  print  it,  and 
start  out  afterwards  to  collect  the  money  to  meet  the 
expense;  and  so  successful  was  he  in  this  line  that  he 
used  to  say  his  epitaph  ought  to  be,  "Here  lies  a 
good  beggar."  It  is  impossible  to  calculate  the  num- 
ber of  tracts  and  useful  periodicals  thus  put  into 
Spanish  and  circulated. 

As  his  influence  spread,  the  opposition  which  he 
had  encountered  from  the  beginning  naturally  declared 
itself  more  positively.  This  produced  controversy. 
Moreover,  he  was  a  tireless  and  aggressive  worker  for 
the  convictions  which  he  held,  the  reasoned  grounds 
of  which  he  was  ever  clearly  and  courageously  set- 
ting forth.  But  he  was  always  the  gentleman  and 
always  the  friend,  and  his  polemics  were  full,  not  of 
hard  hitting  only,  but  also  of  his  genial  kindness  and 
irresistible  love. 

In  1863  there  took  place  the  celebrated  public 
discussion  between  Dr.  Trumbull  and  Mariano  Casa- 
nova— a  discussion  deserving  notice  not  so  much  for 
itself  as  for  the  results  it  produced.  In  Chile  there  is  a 
Saint  of  Agriculture  who  guards  the  fortune  of  far- 
mers, giving  them  rich  harvests  and  sending  rain  at 
the  appointed  times.  Since  the  seasons  are  fairly 
regular  the  good  ofhces  of  San  Isidro  are  seldom  re- 

[203] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

quired.  Occasionally,  however,  the  rains  are  delayed, 
much  to  the  loss  of  the  sower  and  the  distress  of  the 
eater.  At  such  times  mild  measures  are  used  to  begin 
with,  and  the  saint  is  reminded  of  his  duty  by  proces- 
sions and  prayers,  and  placated  by  offerings.  If  he 
still  refuses  to  Hsten,  his  statue  is  banished  from  his 
church,  even  manacled  and  beaten  through  the  streets. 
Such  scenes  take  place  in  Santiago  even  in  our  day. 
In  1863  San  Isidro  answered  the  prayers  of  his  devotees 
with  commendable  promptitude.  Eighteen  hours 
after  suppHcations  had  been  made  at  his  altar  rain 
fell  in  copious  showers.  In  view  of  this  signal  bless- 
ing the  archbishop  called  upon  the  faithful  for  contri- 
butions to  repair  St.  Isidro's  shabby  church.  It  was 
at  this  juncture  that  Dr.  Trumbull  entered  the  Hsts; 
and  in  an  article  entitled  ''Who  gives  the  rain?" 
which  was  pubHshed  in  "La  Voz  de  Chile,"  he  attacked 
the  practice  of  saint  worship.  Casanova  replied  in 
"El  Ferrocarril,"  and  the  battle  was  on.  Charge 
and  countercharge  followed  in  rapid  succession.  The 
affair  got  into  the  provincial  papers  and  was  discussed 
all  over  the  country.  San  Isidro  and  rain  became 
the  question  of  the  day;  and  at  last  Casanova  with- 
drew from  the  field,  routed  foot  and  horse. 

As  a  result  of  this  discussion  Dr.  Trumbull  became 
the  acknowledged  champion  of  Protestantism  in 
Chile.  The  progressive  party  at  once  recognized  in 
him  a  powerful  ally;  while  the  ultramontanes  saw  in 
him  a  dangerous  foe.  His  sphere  of  influence  now 
extended  beyond  the  local  church  of  which  he  was 
pastor  to  the  country  at  large,  and  he  took  his  place 
among  the  leaders  of  national  reform. 

[204] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

His  views  on  the  Lord's  day  also  brought  down 
opposition.  "You  may  feel  interested  to  know,"  he 
wrote  to  the  Board  in  1876,  ''that  the  recent  notices 
in  the  '  Record '  touching  the  desecration  of  the 
Lord's  day  have  elicited  the  fire  of  the  adversaries, 
who  are  down  on  us  for  presuming  to  imagine  men 
could  give  any  time  during  the  six  working  days  of 
the  week  for  mihtary  and  firemen's  drills." 

But  hard  fighter  as  he  was  for  what  he  beheved  to 
be  truth,  his  boundless  neighborhness  made  it  hard 
for  anyone  to  cherish  anger  against  him.  A  cholera 
plague  broke  out.  He  at  once  gathered  all  the 
contributions  he  could  and  gave  them  to  the  cure  of 
San  Fehpe,  who  sent  him  the  grateful  reply:  "That 
God,  who  has  promised  to  reward  the  cup  of  cold  water 
given  in  his  name,  may  crown  you  with  all  good,  is 
my  desire." 

As  he  lived  his  open,  friendly,  untiring  hfe  in  Val- 
paraiso his  influence  grew  day  by  day.  His  courses 
of  action  were  so  prudent,  so  kindly,  so  winning,  that 
it  came  at  last  to  be  clearly  understood  what  kind  of 
man  he  was,  and  the  city  and  the  prominent  men  of 
the  country  grew  to  think  that  without  him  the 
nation  would  be  poorer.  An  old  college  mate  wrote 
of  him  in  the  "New  Englander": 

The  interest  which  he  took  in  all  that  pertained  to  the 
material  and  moral  advancement  of  the  country  was  recog- 
nized. The  suspicion  with  which  he  had  at  first  been  re- 
garded was  broken  down  completely.  A  native  writer  says, 
''Though  in  the  eariy  days  of  his  active  and  successful  procla- 
mation of  the  gospel,  veritable  tempests  of  envy  and  hatred 
were  raised,  yet  the  personaHty  of  Dr.  Trumbull  was  such 
that  little  by  Uttle  it  commanded  the  attention  of  all  such  as 

[205] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

were  watching  the  outcome  of  his  toil;  and,  as  time  went  on, 
the  whole  country  recognized  the  claims  of  his  talents  and  his 
virtues."  Another  native  writer  says  that  he  had  gained 
such  general  respect  in  Valparaiso  that  "a,  prestige"  began 
to  surround  him. 

He  gradually  acquired  a  great  personal  influence 
over  the  leaders  of  the  Liberal  party.  After  these  men 
had  learned  his  ability,  and  become  convinced  of  the 
unselfishness  and  sincerity  of  his  character,  he  gained 
such  a  hold  on  them  by  his  genial  manners  and  rare 
powers  of  conversation  that  they  frequently  sought 
his  counsels  in  public  affairs,  and  his  wise  suggestions 
with  regard  to  them  determined  the  policy  of  the 
State. 

The  measures  of  state  policy  which  were  most 
upon  his  heart  and  which  enlisted  his  constant  effort 
related  to  the  opening  of  the  cemeteries,  the  estab- 
lishment of  civil  marriage  and  the  civil  registry  of 
births  and  deaths,  to  religious  toleration,  and,  if  it 
might  be,  to  the  separation  of  Church  and  State. 
When  Dr.  Trumbull  reached  Chile  all  the  cemeteries 
were  in  the  hands  of  the  Catholic  Church.  Any 
Catholic  in  full  communion  had  the  right  of  burial; 
yet  even  for  these  exorbitant  interment  dues  were 
charged,  and  it  was  no  rare  thing  for  bodies  to  remain 
unburied  for  days  until  the  friends  could  raise  the 
money  demanded  by  the  church.  Baptisms  and  the 
registry  of  births  and  marriages  were  in  the  hands 
of  the  parochial  priests,  and  fees  were  demanded 
such  as  the  poor  could  ill  afford  to  pay.  For  this 
reason  many  did  not  call  in  the  offices  of  the  church, 
while  in  regard  to  marriages  the  state  of  affairs  was 

[206] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

even  worse.  In  the  case  of  Protestants  there  were 
vexatious  delays  and  heavy  expenses,  to  escape  some 
of  which  some  were  married  by  the  British  or  American 
consuls  on  board  of  vessels  of  their  nationality,  on 
the  high  seas,  outside  the  three-mile  Hmit.  The 
marriage  of  a  Protestant  to  a  Catholic  was  made  even 
more  difficult.  Provided  a  dispensation  from  Rome 
were  secured,  it  was  possible  for  a  Protestant  to  marry 
and  remain  of  his  faith;  but  this  involved  a  long  delay 
and  an  expense  running  up  into  the  hundreds  and  often 
the  thousands  of  pesos.  He  could  still  retain  his 
rehgion  and  be  married  if  he  paid  heavy  fees  to  the 
parish  priest  and,  moreover,  signed  a  statement 
before  a  notary  public  promising  to  bring  up  his 
children  in  the  Roman  Catholic  faith,  never  to  crit- 
icize the  Church,  allow  his  wife's  confessor  to  choose 
the  schools  for  his  children  and  direct  their  edu- 
cation, and  name  as  executors  of  his  estate  only 
such  persons  as  were  approved  of  by  the  confes- 
sor. Otherwise  he  could  marry  only  by  becom- 
ing a  Catholic  and  thus  making  a  public  abju- 
ration of  his  faith.  In  the  case  of  CathoKcs  it  was 
much  easier  to  legalize  marriage,  but  such  outrageous 
fees  were  charged  that  the  lower,  middle  and  poorer 
classes  were  incHned  to  omit  the  ceremony.  Many 
illicit  relations  were  and  are  to-day  due  to  the  cu- 
pidity of  the  clergy.  In  fact,  the  church  has  been 
educating  the  people  for  over  one  hundred  years  in 
the  school  of  illegitimacy. 

In  order  to  remedy  this  state  of  things  a  move- 
ment was  set  on  foot  in  1875  which  resulted  in  the 
reforms    of    1880    and    1884.    The    cemetery    bill, 

[207] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

which  made  all  burial  places  free,  was  passed  in  August, 
1883,  and  in  January,  the  following  year,  the  civil 
marriage  act  was  promulgated.  These  two  steps  of 
progress  gave  Dr.  Trumbull  great  satisfaction.  He 
wrote  to  the  Board  on  January  12,  1884:  ''Our  Con- 
gress has  just  passed  a  civil  marriage  bill  which 
deprives  the  Roman  CathoKc  Church  of  all  supe- 
riority over  other  denominations  and  must  reduce  its 
emoluments  immensely.  And  we  must  pour  light 
in."  He  rejoiced  that  he  had  lived  to  see  such  im- 
portant measures  approved  as  the  law  of  the  land. 
"Often  he  had  Hstened,"  says  Mr.  Dodge,  ''to  tales 
of  suffering  from  those  who  could  not  be  at  peace  with 
conscience  in  their  domestic  relations  without  pay- 
ment of  large  sums  for  dispensations  or  by  accepting 
dogmas  which  the  State  Church  imposed,  and  he  had 
labored  and  prayed  for  legal  reHef." 

Those  Hving  to-day  in  Chile  can  hardly  imagine 
the  tremendous  excitement  created  throughout  the 
country  by  the  mere  proposal  of  these  reforms,  and 
the  imminent  danger  there  was  of  a  rehgious  civil 
war.  Dr.  Trumbull  was  called  four  times  to  Santiago 
to  consult  with  President  Santa  Maria  and  the  leaders 
of  the  Liberal  party.  In  the  heat  of  the  fight  it  was 
proposed  to  take  extreme  measures,  and  declare,  in 
addition  to  the  three  bills  already  mentioned,  the 
separation  of  Church  and  State.  It  was  due,  in 
great  part  at  least,  to  Dr.  Trumbull's  efforts  that  this 
step  was  not  taken.  Subsequent  events  proved  the 
wisdom  of  Dr.  Trumbull's  views;  for  the  Liberal  party 
had  overestimated  its  own  strength  and  underesti- 
mated the  forces  of  the  opposition.    Had  the  separa- 

[208] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

tion  of  Church  and  State  been  attempted  that  bill 
would  never  have  passed  Congress,  and  that  would 
have  also  sealed  the  fate  of  the  other  reforms.  A 
CathoHc  reaction  came  on  shortly  after,  and  it  is 
highly  probable  that  if  it  had  not  been  for  Dr.  Trum- 
bull none  of  these  reforms  would  have  been  sanctioned 
by  Congress,  and  that  Protestants  in  Chile  would  be 
living  to-day  under  an  ecclesiastical  tyranny  more 
easily  imagined  than  described. 

The  struggle  for  religious  Hberty  was  more  pro- 
longed. When  Dr.  Trumbull  reached  Chile  and  on 
into  the  early  sixties  all  evangelical  work  among  the 
Chileans  was  impossible.  It  was  dangerous  because 
of  the  temper  of  the  people,  and  punishable  be- 
cause opposed  to  the  law  of  the  land.  The  famous 
Fifth  Article  of  the  Constitution  declares  that  the 
Apostolic,  CathoHc,  Roman  rehgion  is  the  rehgion 
of  the  State  and  of  the  people — any  other  form  of 
worship  being  absolutely  prohibited.  As  long  as 
this  article  remained  unmodified  and  in  force,  all 
Protestant  worship  was  out  of  the  question.  It  is 
true  that  the  members  of  Union  Church  were  permitted 
to  hold  services  in  the  building  they  had  erected,  but 
this  was  really  illegal — a  degree  of  Hberty  being 
allowed  as  a  favor  to  British  merchants  and  to  their 
diplomatic  representative,  but  this  liberty  could, 
by  no  means,  be  expected  to  guarantee  the  natives  of 
the  country  a  like  liberty.  It  was  at  this  time  that 
the  leaders  of  the  Liberal  party,  and  Dr.  TrumbuH 
among  them,  drew  up  what  was  known  as  "the 
interpretive  law."  This  was  passed  by  Congress  in 
1865  during  the  presidency  of  Perez.  The  bill,  as 
[209] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

finally  passed  by  the  Chilean  Congress,  permitted 
dissenters  to  hold  services  in  private  buildings,  and 
also  to  establish  private  schools  for  the  education  of 
their  children.  It  prohibited,  however,  all  acts  and 
shows  of  worship,  such  as  processions,  bells,  steeples 
and  current  types  of  churchly  architecture;  still  it 
was  the  passage  of  this  bill  which  made  preaching  in 
Spanish  possible,  and  Dr.  Trumbull  wrote  at  once  to 
New  York  asking  for  reenforcements. 

In  a  letter  of  January  i,  1874,  he  told  of  the  ensuing 
stages  of  the  struggle: 

In  Congress  recently  it  has  been  proposed  to  separate 
Church  and  State;  but  this,  so  far  as  it  has  come  from  church 
partisans,  means,  set  the  Chur'ch  free  to  govern  itself,  but  still 
pay  its  bills!  Such  arrangement  will  not  be  consummated, 
ever.  If  the  Church  would  accept  complete  independence 
the  State  would  agree  to  that,  and  the  nation  probably  ac- 
cept the  settlement.  Meanwhile  Congress  has  adjourned 
and  nothing  will  probably  be  done  till  June.  But  we  have 
now  liberty  to  proclaim  our  message  in  any  and  every  way. 
Especially  the  press  should  be  employed  more  than  it  is. 

On  September  24,  1875,  he  wrote: 

The  elections  for  Congress  and  president  are  approaching; 
in  the  platforms  of  the  parties  it  is  encouraging  to  notice 
that  religious  freedom  occupies  a  prominent  place. 

On  January  29,  1876,  he  wrote: 

The  elections  are  coming  on,  but  the  oppressive  doctrines 
of  the  Romish  clergy  are  below  par.  By  alliance  with  the 
liberal  factions  they  might  hope  to  do  something,  but  in  that 
case  they  must  sell  out  their  principles.  This,  for  their 
honor,  I  trust  they  may  not  do. 

[210] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

Dr.  Trumbull  passed  away  without  seeing  this  last 
and  greatest  reform  for  which  he  had  wrought.  How 
nearly  he  came  to  seeing  it  a  letter  from  Mr.  Dodge, 
May  II,  1888,  will  show,  in  which  Mr.  Dodge  explains 
what  he  calls  ''the  unfortunate  failure  of  the  Reform 
Bill  in  our  Congress": 

The  reform  of  the  fifth  or  religious  article  of  the  Consti- 
tution had  been  voted  by  two  congresses  and  we  all  hoped 
that  it  would  be  finally  passed  by  the  third  and  become  the 
law  of  the  land.  At  the  last  moment,  however,  party  differ- 
ences arose  on  other  grounds,  and  this,  together  with  renewed 
priestly  opposition,  has  defeated  the  measure  so  long  looked 
for  by  the  friends  of  religious  freedom.  ...  It  has  been  said 
a  number  of  times  in  the  home  papers  that  there  is  religious 
liberty  in  Chile,  and  that  our  missionaries  have  here  the 
protection  of  law.  Constitutionally  this  is  not  the  case, 
though  it  is  true  that  public  sentiment  is,  on  the  whole,  in  our 
favor.  The  fifth  article  of  the  Constitution  recognizes  the 
Roman  CathoHc  Church  as  the  State  Church  and  declares 
that  the  worship  of  that  church  is  the  only  worship  acknowl- 
edged by  the  law  of  the  land.  Some  years  ago  an  "inter- 
preting clause"  was  added  to  this  article,  by  which  the  privi- 
lege of  worship  was  granted  to  foreign  residents.  By  this 
clause  foreigners  in  Chile  are  allowed  to  hold  services  of 
worship  according  to  their  conscience,  for  themselves,  and 
to  have  schools  for  their  own  children.  This  is,  in  brief, 
the  substance  of  the  matter.  The  interpreting  clause  does 
not  apply  to  the  citizens  of  the  country,  but  was  drawn  up 
and  passed  in  behalf  of  foreign  communities.  Hence,  while 
as  Americans,  or  British,  or  French,  or  German  residents 
we  have  this  right  of  worship,  we  have  not  a  constitutional 
right  to  found  churches  and  schools  as  a  mission  de  propa- 
ganda fide.  A  Spanish  mission  church  or  school  is  not 
opened  for  foreigners,  but  for  the  Chileans  who  need  the 
gospel.  Consequently,  instead  of  being  protected  by  the 
law,  as  missionaries  in  Spanish,  we  haven't  a  foot  to  stand 

[2,1] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

on  in  the  law,  and  were  the  government  disposed  to  do  so,  its 
officers  could  legally  close  our  chapels  and  schools  to-morrow 
and  refuse  us  the  right  of  residence.  This  will  not  be  done  by 
a  liberal  government,  but  it  would  be  done  by  a  clerical. 
As  I  have  already  remarked,  public  sentiment  is  in  our 
favor  and  it  is  this  sentiment  that  protects  us  wherever  we 
go.  Now  the  recently  lapsed  reform,  while  it  did  not  mean 
the  disestablishment  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  would 
have  given  us  the  constitutional  religious  Hberty  which  is  so 
desirable.  The  reform  meant  national  toleration  and  relig- 
ious equality  before  the  law  for  the  whole  country.  By  it 
also  the  president's  oath  to  support  and  protect  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  would  have  been  rescinded.  Ultimately 
we  hope  the  reform  will  be  passed.  At  present  under  a  liberal 
government  we  have  a  faint  hope  to  secure  a  charter  to  hold 
property,  but  we  do  not  feel  confident  of  success. 

The  charter  for  the  Presbyterian  Mission,  known 
as  the  Union  Evangelica,  which  is  referred  to  by  Mr. 
Dodge,  was  obtained,  and  it  secured  much  for  which 
Dr.  Trumbull  had  striven.     Dr.  Lester  says: 

The  original  petition,  as  drawn  up  by  the  mission's  com- 
mittee, was  couched  in  the  mildest  of  terms.  Before  it  was 
presented,  however,  it  was  sent  to  Dr.  Trumbull  for  revision. 
He  was  at  that  time  too  feeble  to  attend  the  sessions  of  the 
mission  in  Santiago;  but  the  old  spirit  was  there,  and  under 
his  hand  it  became  clearly  and  positively  Protestant  and 
evangelical.  The  first  article  respectfully  asked  the  govern- 
ment to  grant  those  who  believed  in  the  reformed  faith  based 
on  the  Holy  Scriptures  the  right  to  exercise  and  propagate 
their  faith.  We  presented  this  petition,  never  expecting 
that  it  would  be  approved;  but  it  was,  and  the  Presbyterian 
mission,  under  the  name  of  "La  Union  EvangeHca,"  was 
granted  incorporation  by  a  decree  dated  November,  1888, 
two  months  before  Dr.  Trumbull's  death.  This  was  Dr. 
Trumbull's  last  work  in  connection  with  the  mission,  and  it 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

was  the  crown;  for  it  placed  all  evangelistic  work  on  a  legal 
basis,  and  practically  granted,  not  merely  the  Presbyterian 
mission,  but  all  other  organizations  laboring  in  Chile,  freedom 
of  worship. 

Under  the  liberal  advance  thus  initiated  not  only  are 
Protestants  now  free  to  hold  services,  own  and  hold  their 
property  under  "personeria  juridica,"  but  the  very  state 
recognizes  them  still  further  as  rehgious  bodies,  in  that  it 
admits  their  church  fittings,  organs,  and  so  forth,  to  come  in 
free  of  duty,  the  same  as  for  their  own  church,  on  the  ground 
of  their  being  used  for  "divine  worship." 


Thus,  before  he  died,  the  old  soldier  did  see  the 
victorious  end  of  his  struggle.  So  deeply  had  his 
interest  been  enlisted  in  the  contest  and  so  intensely 
had  he  entered  into  the  life  of  the  land  that  he  had 
vowed  that  if  the  cemetery  and  marriage  reforms 
passed  he  would  become  a  Chilean  citizen.  When 
this  desire  of  his  heart  was  fulfilled,  ''he  appeared," 
as  one  of  the  Valparaiso  newspapers  says,  ''before 
the  municipality,  asking  for  naturalization  papers; 
on  hearing  this  petition,  one  of  the  municipal  officers, 
in  manifestation  of  the  wishes  of  all,  requested  that  a 
note  might  be  entered  in  the  record  of  the  pleasure 
with  which  as  a  body  they  received  Dr.  Trumbull's 
application,  and  asked  that,  without  the  legal  formal- 
ity of  placing  it  on  the  table,  it  should  be  at  once 
forwarded  to  the  President  of  the  Republic.  This 
was  unanimously  sustained."  He  had  long  been  ac- 
customed to  refer  to  Chile  as  "our  country"  and  to 
its  institutions  and  interest  as  his  own,  and  his  natu- 
rahzation  naturally  strengthened  the  feelings  of  affec- 
tion and  confidence  with  which  Chileans  regarded 

[213] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

him.  The  great-grandson  of  Jonathan  Trumbull  was 
a  loyal  American  to  the  last  drop  of  his  blood.  That 
was  why,  being  in  Chile,  knowing  that  Chile  was  to 
be  his  home,  he  sought  to  live  wholly  for  Chile  and 
to  bring  into  the  very  blood  of  Chile  his  own  Hfe  by 
what  he  looked  upon  as  the  sacrament  of  naturaHza- 
tion.  His  action  was,  however,  a  great  surprise  to 
his  acquaintances.  Dr.  Lester,  of  Santiago,  to  whom 
I  am  indebted  for  much  help  in  this  sketch,  tells  us: 

The  friends  of  Dr.  Trumbull  were  amazed,  and  some  dis- 
mayed, to  learn  that  he  had  renounced  his  American  citizen- 
ship and  had  become  a  naturalized  Chilean.  This  seemed  in- 
explicable in  view  of  his  great  love  for,  and  stanch  loyalty  to, 
his  native  land.  Surrounded  by  foreigners,  he  defended  his 
country  as  bravely  as  his  Continental  ancestors  did  before 
him.  No  Britisher,  even  in  friendly  jest,  could  speak  slight- 
ingly of  the  States,  and  escape  unwounded.  Once  an  Eng- 
lishman at  his  table  remarked,  "I  never  could  understand, 
doctor,  how  you  keep  that  picture  on  your  wall,  and  in  such 
a  conspicuous  place,  too."  The  picture  represented  the  "Es- 
sex" in  Valparaiso  Bay,  striking  her  colors  to  two  English  men- 
of-war.  With  a  smile,  and  in  his  dulcet  voice,  the  doctor  re- 
plied: "I  wouldn't  take  anything  for  that  picture.  It's  the 
greatest  curiosity  in  the  house;  for  it  is  the  only  instance  in 
history  where  an  American  vessel  ever  hauled  down  her  flag 
to  an  enemy.  Can  you  duplicate  that  in  English  history?" 
It  was  strange,  therefore,  that  Dr.  Trumbull  should,  of  all 
men,  have  changed  his  nationality — a  change  in  which  he  had 
much  to  lose  and  nothing  to  gain.  In  a  moment  of  con- 
fidence he  solved  the  puzzle.  During  the  dark  days  of  the 
reform  movement,  when  defeat  seemed  inevitable,  he  spent 
many  hours  in  prayer;  and  then  it  was,  he  said,  when  he  had 
made  a  vow  to  God  that,  if  his  prayers  should  be  answered 
and  these  reforms  become  law,  he  would  show  his  gratitude 
by  becoming  a  citizen  of  the  country  to  which  he  had  given 
his  life.     His  prayers  were  answered,  and  he  paid  his  vow. 

bi4] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

Dr.  Tnimbull's  missionary  connection  changed  also 
during  his  long  life  in  Chile.  In  1873  the  work  of  the 
Foreign  and  Christian  Union,  which  had  succeeded 
the  Foreign  Evangehcal  Society,  was  distributed 
since  there  appeared  to  be  no  longer  any  need  for 
such  an  organization,  in  view  of  the  growth  of  the 
church  missionary  agencies.  The  work  of  the  Union 
in  Chile  was  taken  over  by  the  Presbyterian  Board. 
His  subsequent  correspondence  with  the  Board  is  full 
of  the  viriHty  and  fragrance  of  his  rich  personaHty. 
It  begins  with  his  welcome  of  the  Board  and  his  view 
of  the  importance  of  a  strong,  courageous  and  out- 
reaching  policy.  Dr.  Trumbull  was  a  loyal  Congre- 
gationaHst.  He  believed  that  this  polity  had  the 
sanction  of  primitive  Christianity,  and  never  consented 
to  become  a  member  of  the  Chile  Presbytery;  yet  he 
laid  aside  personal  preferences  and,  for  the  good  of 
the  cause  he  had  so  much  at  heart,  used  his  influence 
to  intrust  that  cause  to  another  denomination. 

Now  that  it  is  settled  that  your  Board  takes  up  the  Chilean 
branch  of  effort,  I  have  only  to  say  that  I  rejoice,  after  being 
here  twenty-seven  years,  to  learn  that  one  section  of  the 
household  of  faith  reahzes  the  opening  and  the  work  to  be 
done  in  this  land.  Whatever  might  be  my  preference  per- 
sonally, your  Board  shall  find  in  me  only  the  heartiest  co- 
operation. .  .  . 

If  an  impression  is  to  be  made  here  you  must  not  have 
small  or  weak  missions.  If  a  missionary  has  to  do  the  work 
of  two  men  it  will  be  only  partially  done.  Send  more  men 
to  do  the  work  of  breaking  up  fallow  ground;  and  let  them 
be  not  merely  good,  but  able  men,  who  will  be  missed  at 
home.  One  whose  loss  will  not  be  felt  in  the  United  States, 
one  whose  friends  do  not  implore  him  to  remain  at  home, 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

will  accomplish  little  abroad.  To  send  an  unprepared  or 
mediocre  missionary  is  to  fritter  away  the  money  of  the 
churches.  Not  men  that  will  wait,  then,  but  that  will  work. 
Not  only  men  who  will  give  the  Lord  no  rest,  but  who  will 
lift  up  their  voice  and  not  give  the  representatives  of  error 
here  a  single  day,  or  night,  or  hour  of  quiet.  Formerly 
there  were  difficulties  in  the  way.  In  1823  missionaries 
of  the  American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Mis- 
sions came  here  and,  discouraged,  went,  or  were  called,  away. 
Quite  wrong  it  was;  they  should  have  held  on — done  what 
they  could,  then  done  more  and  more  again.  A  different 
history  would  then  have  been  written  of  this  coast.  But  now 
the  doors  are  open — men  can't  be  silenced  by  law — public 
opinion  has  been  formed  and  trained  and  accustomed  to  hear 
discussion;  and  now  it  insists  that  we  shall  be  heard — if  we 
speak.  You  have  four  men  here  now;  you  must  have  ten 
more;  plant  them  not  in  isolation — at  least  two  by  two  as 
Jesus  sent  his  disciples,  and  let  them  work  out  from  centers, 
preaching  in  central  points  and  yet  able  to  go  out  itinerating 
to  other  towns.  There  are  a  million  and  three-quarter  in- 
habitants in  this  country,  all  Roman  Catholics  except  a  few 
foreign  residents,  English,  Scotch  and  North  American,  and 
Germans — these  are  numerous,  and,  besides,  there  are  colo- 
nies of  them  at  the  south,  and  German  ministers  are  in  the 
country.  There  are  some  thousands  of  Indians  south  of 
Concepcion  and  north  of  Valdivia — in  almost  complete 
paganism.  .  .  . 

As  to  the  adjacent  countries,  they  should  be  cared  for. 
Mendoza,  over  the  mountains  at  the  east,  Bolivia  also  and 
Peru  should  be  provided  for  as  soon  as  practicable;  but  your 
wisdom  will  be  to  kindle  a  strong  fire  here  first.  Another  ad- 
vantage in  that  policy  will  be  that  it  will  call  attention;  and, 
through  similarity  of  language,  whatever  is  printed  in  one 
place  can  reach  a  hundred  other  towns — and  six  millions  of 
people.  Do  not  then  adopt  the  plan  of  scattering,  but  of 
concentrating,  the  forces  disposable — two  strong  stations  will 
accomplish  more  than  six  weak  and  isolated  ones. 

[216] 


m 

What  Trumbull  was  accomplishing  in  Chile  was 
making  itself  felt  in  BoKvia,  Peru  and  Argentina.  The 
new  spirit  of  freedom  could  not  be  confined  in  any  one 
land.  And  he  was  eager  that  the  long-neglected 
countries  to  the  north  should  be  occupied.  On  March 
8,  1878,  he  wrote: 

Can  you  not  attempt  something  for  this  coast,  to  the  north 
of  us,  to  bring  the  Scriptures  to  the  people  there?  They  know 
nothing  of  the  Book  in  Peru,  BoKvia  and  Ecuador.  .  .  . 

The  Scriptures  can't  be  bought  there  at  all — say  from 
Panama  to  Cobija.  Can  you  not  engage  in  the  distinct, 
special  effort  for  these  three  repubHcs? 

On  July  S,  1882,  he  appealed: 

I  have  just  received  from  Callao  a  letter  signed  by  sixty- 
one  men,  Scotch,  English  and  American.  ...  If  you  occupy 
it  you  might  have  a  self-sustaining  congregation  formed  there, 
and  a  congregation  that  would  reach  later  on  the  native 
people,  and  so  begin  the  redemption  of  Peru.  Do  not  say 
it  can't  be  attempted.  Why  are  these  less  important  to  care 
for  than  people  in  the  center  of  Africa,  so  that  when  Stanley 
tells  of  them  half-a-dozen  missionary  societies  rush  to  occupy 
the  ground,  and  here  not  a  single  one? 

On  October  27,  1882,  he  called  once  more  on  behalf  of 
Callao : 

The  manager  of  the  steamship  company  told  me  only 
yesterday  that  they  have  five  hundred  men,  English,  in 
Callao,  but  that  there  is  no  service.  I  know  from  a  number 
of  these  men  that  they  desire  to  have  worship;  their  decided 
preference  is  Presbyterian,  and  you  are  the  people  that  ought 
to  give  it  to  them.     If  you  will  provide  it,  you  will   win 

[217] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

credit  and  you  will  have  assistance.  Only  do  not  wait  for 
anybody  to  ask  it,  nor  for  anybody  to  promise  anything. 
Just  sail  in  like  Farragut  into  Mobile  Bay;  consider  your- 
self that  gallant  and  daring  admiral  up  in  the  maintop  of 
the  ''Richmond,"  tied  by  your  waist,  so  as  not  to  fall,  and 
capture  the  forts  of  Callao  harbor. 

You  know  I  am  not  much  of  a  Presbyterian,  but  these 
missions  belong  to  the  Presbyterian  Board  on  this  coast,  and 
I  can't  bear  to  think  of  your  missing  your  opportunity.  .  .  . 
You  say  you  must  be  prudent,  and  so  you  must,  but  there 
is  no  better  prudence  than  courage;  and  with  favoring  cir- 
cumstances, an  unoccupied  church  and  schoolhouse,  and 
from  five  hundred  to  eight  hundred  people,  the  greater  part 
of  whom  are  Presbyterians  by  education  and  attachments,  I 
am  sure  prudence  is  not  to  miss  the  chance,  but  to  improve  it. 

He  believed  in  the  policy  of  working  out  from  the 
foreigners  in  South  America  to  the  native  peoples. 
In  a  later  letter  he  wrote  of  this: 

Never  were  the  prospects  of  this  field  what  they  now  are.  I 
would  like  to  say  here  that  the  originating  idea  of  this  mis- 
sion in  1845,  with  the  Foreign  Evangelical  Society  and  later 
on  the  American  and  Foreign  Christian  Union,  was  not  to  sep- 
arate native  and  foreign  work,  but  to  begin  the  latter  in  order 
to  carry  forward  the  former;  and,  whatever  may  be  the  case 
elsewhere,  it  is  the  way  to  succeed  on  this  coast  and  in  these 
countries. 

When  Dr.  Henry  H.  Jessup  of  Syria,  acting  as  one 
of  the  Board's  secretaries  during  his  furlough,  wrote 
to  him  of  the  unlikelihood  of  help  for  Callao,  he 
wrote  back  out  of  a  disappointed  heart  such  a  letter 
as  missionary  workers  in  South  America  have  often 
had  to  pen: 

Your  letter  of  December  nth  has  given  me  great  pain. 
I  had  thought  the  Board  really  would  take  the  lead  in  pro- 

[218] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

viding  for  this  forgotten  coast.  Its  inhabitants  would  be 
better  ofif  if  they  lived  in  Asia.  Is  "  America  "  so  poor  a  name 
to  divine  by?  Each  member  of  the  mission  is  disappointed, 
and  I  beg  you  to  inform  the  brethren  of  the  Board  that  I  feel 
the  keenest  chagrin.  The  people  of  this  coast — foreigners — 
turn  to  me,  sick  of  the  disappointments  they  have  had, 
hoping  that  I  can  put  them  in  the  way  of  some  really  good, 
faithful  ministers,  educated  and  substantial,  and  yet  the  hopes 
are  all  dashed  to  the  ground.  "The  Board  regard  it  as  in- 
expedient to  undertake  the  work"  is  their  chilling  reply  to 
men  long  in  the  field,  who  have  given  up  our  country  to  live 
abroad,  in  exile,  hoping  that  this  coast  might  be  taken  pos- 
session of  for  Christ  at  last;  then  when  we  tell  of  points  that 
ought  to  be  occupied  and  can  be  with  advantage  in  every  way, 
with  an  immediate  prospect  of  winning  souls  and  educating 
children  for  Jesus,  in  a  field  already  partly  prepared  and 
white  for  the  harvest,  we  find  that  at  headquarters  our  plead- 
ings are  unappreciated.  Really  I  do  not  think  I  have  felt 
more  disappointed  and  disheartened  by  anything  I  have  met 
here  during  thirty-seven  years  than  this  reply  the  Presby- 
terian Board  has  now  sent  us.  I  ask  myself  in  bitterness. 
Can  this  be  the  feeling  of  the  churches  that  we  had  imagined 
sympathized  with  us?  Or  is  it  that  the  Board  does  not  con- 
fide in  us — in  our  judgment  or  in  our  fidehty  and  trustworthi- 
ness? The  only  thing  I  can  compare  it  to  is  the  estimate  put 
on  General  Sherman's  advice  to  Secretary  Cameron  when  the 
war  began.  Sherman  told  Cameron  "two  hundred  thousand 
men"  would  be  needed  to  cut  through  the  Confederacy  on 
the  hne  of  the  Cumberland  River;  and  Cameron  returned  to 
Washington  informing  the  Cabinet  that  "poor  Sherman 
had  lost  his  reason."  Excuse  me  for  saying  it,  but  it  was 
they  who  were  out  of  their  reckoning,  not  realizing  the  task 
they  had  in  hand,  nor  their  opportunity  for  taking  it  up  and 
performing  it.  The  Presbyterian  Board  is,  before  God,  re- 
sponsible for  this  coast;  if  they  do  not  attempt  its  conversion, 
no  other  solid  society  will ;  the  evangelization  of  these  republics 
lies  at  their  door — so  that  were  it  the  last  word  God  should 
allow  me  to  write  them,  it  would  be  to  ask  that  they  recon- 

[219] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

sider  their  vote  of  December  nth,  and  resolve  that  they  will 
occupy  Callao,  as  well  as  Iquique,  will  provide  a  successor 
for  Mr.  McLean,  send  out,  though  at  Mr.  Balfour's  expense, 
a  teacher  for  the  training  school  for  teachers  and  preachers 
here,  and  finally  furnish  a  missionary  who  may  go  into 
southern  Chile  and  begin  a  work  among  the  heathen  Indians — 
that  are  just  now  submitting  to  the  government. 

He  dealt  in  his  letters  also,  in  his  kind  put  positive 
way,  with  questions  of  missionary  policy  in  Chile. 
He  explained  the  difficulty  of  self-support: 

The  fact  is,  "the  gift"  of  giving  has  been  always  neglected 
during  their  Roman  condition;  they  were  charged  by  their 
clergy  regular  fees,  and  few  of  them  have  any  idea  that  they 
are  to  sustain  their  own  religious  ordinances  freely.  Then,  as 
you  may  have  inferred,  thus  far  converts  are  not  of  a  class 
having  means  to  spare. 

He  argues  earnestly  against  the  absorption  of  time 
by  a  fellow  missionary  in  a  school  when  the  need  for 
preaching  was  so  great  and  the  opportunity  unlimited, 
and  when  the  number  of  missionaries  was  so  inade- 
quate: 

In  the  center  of  a  city  of  two  hundred  thousand  persons, 
with  not  a  hundred  among  the  natives  who  measurably 
comprehend  the  gospel,  it  would  occupy  all  the  time  and 
energies  of  a  missionary  to  proclaim  the  truth  in  the  direct 
work  of  the  ministry.  And  therefore  it  is  most  unwise  for 
him  to  pass  out  of  it  into  work  which  is  less  direct. 

He  was  not  opposed  to  schools.  He  had  founded 
one  and  was  to  found  another.  He  opposed  them  only 
when  they  opposed  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  to 
the  people. 

He  saw  the  beginning  of  Bishop  William  Taylor's 
[220] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

self-supporting  missions  on  the  west  coast  and  he 
foresaw  their  collapse.  But  it  was  reserved  for  the 
great  church  which  WilHam  Taylor  served,  though  it 
was  not  responsible  for  his  missions,  to  come  in  after 
the  wreckage  of  his  enterprise  and  to  establish  sub- 
stantial and  fruitful  missions  almost  all  the  way  from 
the  Straits  of  Magellan  up  to  Panama. 

Trumbull's  last  letter  to  the  Board  was  an  appeal 
in  behalf  of  Peru: 

I  am  this  moment  in  receipt  of  a  letter  from  Peru,  import- 
ant and  encouraging.  Mr.  Penzotti,  agent  of  the  American 
Bible  Society,  holds  services  there  in  Spanish  that  are  well 
attended,  but  he  has  to  go  to  the  interior  with  the  Scriptures. 
The  opportunity  is  favorable;  the  work  already  begun  by  the 
Bible  Society.  Can  you  possibly  send  a  man?  The  door  is 
open  for  a  young,  healthy,  vigorous  missionary. 

This  was  written  only  a  few  weeks  before  his  death. 
The  younger  men  who  had  come  out  to  work  with 
him  could  hardly  conceive  of  Chile  without  him.  One 
of  them  wrote  on  reaching  the  field  in  1882 : 

Dr.  Trumbull  is  bright  and  genial  and  full  of  plans  for  the 
Master's  work.  As  he  expresses  it,  "I'm  renewing  my  youth, 
and  with  God's  grace  and  your  young  blood  we'll  make 
things  move  down  here."  I  am  more  astonished  every 
day  at  the  work  Dr.  Trumbull  has  performed  in  Chile. 
He  is  a  power  for  good  in  this  land,  known  and  respected 
by  the  sailors  even  as  far  north  as  Panama,  and  consulted 
by  senators  and  the  President  in  regard  to  matters  of  national 
importance.  Every  missionary  and  native  worker  looks  to 
Dr.  Trumbull  for  aid  and  counsel.  Dodge  and  I  have  spoken 
of  it  often,  what  a  grand  thing  it  is  to  be  advised  and  directed 
by  such  a  man. 

But  the  wise  counselor  could  not  be  always  with 
[221] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

them,  and  although  he  recovered  from  an  early  attack 
of  angina,  there  was  a  recurrence  of  his  trouble  in 
1886.  On  December  30,  1888,  when  he  was  to  preach 
in  the  Union  Church,  anxiety  and  hurry  lest  he  should 
be  too  late  brought  on  another  heart  attack.  He 
conducted  the  service,  but  it  was  the  last,  and  on 
February  i,  1889,  after  a  month  of  intense  suffering, 
he  passed  forward  to  the  other  side.  For  nearly  half 
a  century  he  had  risen  daily  and  gone  to  his  work. 
At  last  the  day  of  the  larger  life  had  come  and  he  arose 
and  went  to  his  reward.  His  son,  Dr.  John  Trumbull, 
said: 

To  those  who  witnessed  his  illness  and  death  the  recollec- 
tion will  ever  be  of  abounding  hopefulness  and  cheerfulness 
in  suffering,  regret  at  the  trouble  he  feared  he  was  giving, 
unmeasured  gratitude  for  every  kind  attention  shown, 
thankfulness  for  the  blessings  that  surrounded  his  life, 
thoughtfulness  of  those  who  suffer  in  poverty,  calmness  in 
the  prospect  of  death,  assurance  in  the  promises  of  our 
Saviour  and  quiet  victory  over  death. 

Dr.  Trumbull's  departure  seemed  to  his  mission- 
ary associates  as  EHjah's  translation  seemed  to  Elisha. 
The  chariots  of  Israel  and  the  horseman  thereof,  the 
father  of  all  who  worked  with  him,  had  gone  up  out 
of  sight.  ''You  can  have  no  idea,"  wrote  Dr.  AlHs, 
the  president  of  the  mission,  ''how  great  a  blank  the 
death  has  left.  It  seems  as  if  half  of  the  mission 
were  gone."  The  city  and  the  nation  regarded  his 
death  as  a  national  sorrow.  Articles  in  the  leading 
newspapers  bore  loving  tribute  to  what  he  had  been 
and  to  what  he  had  done  for  Chile.  "El  Mercurio," 
Valparaiso,  February  2,  said: 

[222] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

Few  there  have  been,  perhaps,  who  have  preached  virtue 
and  morality,  giving  at  the  same  time  as  perfect  an  example 
in  their  own  conduct  and  life.  There  would  be  much  to  say 
concerning  this  faithful  apostle  if  we  but  commenced  to  speak 
of  all  his  good  works  which  he  carried  to  their  completion 
without  any  ostentation,  rather  with  that  humility  which 
was  so  characteristic  of  him  and  won  for  him  the  sincere 
regard  of  all  social  classes. 

Valparaiso  owed  him  much  and  she  always  felt  honored  in 
claiming  him,  first,  as  the  most  worthy  and  best  known  of  her 
foreign  residents,  and  secondly,  as  a  fellow  countryman;  nay, 
even  more,  as  a  true  brother,  as  he  proved  by  his  love  to 
humanity  and  especially  by  the  love  and  interest  which  he 
felt  in  all  that  pertained  to  the  material  and  moral  advance- 
ment of  this  our  country. 

After  recounting  the  leadiag  events  of  his  life,  "La 
Patria"  said: 

Though  in  the  early  days  of  his  active  and  successful 
proclamation  of  the  gospel  veritable  tempests  of  envy  and 
hatred  were  raised,  yet  the  personality  of  Dr.  Trumbull 
was  such  that,  Httle  by  Httle,  it  commanded  the  attention  of 
all  such  as  were  watching  the  outcome  of  his  toil;  and  as  time 
went  on  the  whole  country  recognized  the  claims  of  his  talents 
and  his  virtues. 

Thus  he  has  been  able  to  witness  the  dechning  days  of  a 
laborious  and  useful  Hfe,  surrounded  with  an  air  of  prestige 
and  respect  such  as  are  the  exclusive  privilege  of  noble  souls. 
In  the  hours  of  difficulty  and  of  trial  through  which  Val- 
paraiso has  passed  the  authorities  always  hastened  to  make 
use  of  his  valuable  services.  Thus  he  has  formed  a  part  in 
almost  all  commissions  charged  with  the  collection  of  funds  for 
our  free  hospital  and  other  charitable  institutions. 

When  the  cholera  in  a  fatal  hour  visited  us  he  was  one  of 
the  first  whom  the  governor  called  upon  to  form  one  of  the 
rehef  committee.  His  worthy  bearing  on  that  occasion 
is  still  fresh  in  the  memory  of  all.     During  those  days  of 

[223] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

anxiety  Valparaiso  saw  the  venerable  figure  of  Trumbull  in 
all  places  of  the  city  where  the  scourge  reaped  its  largest 
harvest,  offering  to  all  words  of  comfort  and  of  cheer;  while 
in  meetings  of  the  commissions  his  persuasive  and  yet  authori- 
tative word  suggested  more  than  one  useful  measure  which 
served  most  materially  to  lessen  the  evils  of  the  epidemic.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Trumbull  has  not  had  occasion  to  regret  in  any  way 
the  love  which  he  bore  his  adopted  country.  On  various 
occasions  he  has  received  eloquent  testimonials  to  the  high 
esteem  in  which  his  talents,  social  quahties  and  boundless 
charity  were  held.  .  .  .  His  memory  will  never  be  buried 
in  the  dust  of  forgetfulness,  and  in  later  years,  when  the 
history  of  the  pubhc  benefactors  of  Valparaiso  is  written, 
the  name  of  Mr.  Trumbull  will,  of  necessity,  occupy  a  leading 
place  by  right  of  his  many  services. 

Even  more  striking  in  its  testimony  to  Dr.  Tram- 
bull's  power  to  inspire  trust  and  to  awaken  love  were 
the  words  which  Don  Francisco  A.  Pinto,  son  of  ex- 
President  Pinto,  spoke  over  his  grave: 

A  good  man,  in  the  fullest  sense  of  this  term,  has  departed 
from  amongst  us.  David  Trumbull  was  one  of  those  men 
who  appear  to  be  specially  sent  by  heaven  into  this  world  to 
do  good,  to  heal  many  wounds  and  to  assuage  much  suffer- 
ing; to  be  the  best  and  most  discreet  friend  in  the  hours  of 
misfortune  and  the  kind  companion  in  the  days  of  happiness. 
.  .  .  Gentlemen,  you  and  I  shall  never  forget  the  venerable 
form  and  figure  of  the  man,  before  whom  everybody  uncov- 
ered with  love  and  respect  in  the  streets  of  this  city.  In  a 
few  brief  moments  more  the  earth  will  cover  his  mortal  re- 
mains, but  the  man  will  never  disappear  from  our  sight. 
Whenever  we  may  hereafter  look  with  the  eye  of  faith  upon 
his  tomb,  we  shall  see  upon  it  a  brilliant  light,  because  men 
of  Dr.  Trumbull's  stamp,  like  the  sun  which  lends  his  luster 
to  the  orb  of  night,  possess  the  privilege  of  irradiating  their 
names  with  the  light  emanating  from  their  singular  virtues 
and   their   eminent   services.     Gentlemen,   I  feel  happy  in 

[224] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

being  able  to  say  that  I  now  take  leave  of  a  countryman  pos- 
sessed of  such  merits,  and  I  can  affirm  that  Chile,  grateful  for 
the  many  services  the  much  lamented  deceased  rendered  to 
her  people,  will  watch  over  this  tomb  with  loving  kindness 
and  deep  veneration. 

So  he  passed  on,  full  of  honor,  to  the  greater  honor 
that  awaited  his  humble  soul  on  high.  Yale  Univer- 
sity had  given  him  the  degree  of  D.  D.  on  his  visit 
home  in  1884,  and  Chile  had  adopted  him  as  her  own 
and  had  pledged  herself  "with  loving  kindness  and 
deep  veneration  to  watch  over  his  tomb."  But  he 
left  other  living  monuments. 

The  ''Sheltering  Home,"  an  orphan  asylum,  owes 
its  existence  and  the  building  it  occupies  to  Dr. 
Trumbull  and  Mr.  Merwin.  The  "Escuela  Popular," 
the  oldest  and  largest  Protestant  school  for  Chileans, 
was  founded  by  these  two  men,  and  the  annual  sub- 
scriptions for  its  support,  begun  thirty  years  ago 
through  Dr.  Trumbull's  influence,  still  continue. 
Through  his  efforts,  too,  it  was  that  in  the  seventies 
an  American  society  sent  out  the  first  seamen's  chap- 
lain, and  it  was  Dr.  Trumbull  who  became  responsible 
for  half  of  his  salary.  The  EngHsh  Board  school, 
which  was  a  very  prominent  educational  factor  in 
Valparaiso  for  years,  owed  its  beginning  and  continu- 
ance in  large  part  to  him.  He  was  also  a  director  and 
one  of  the  prime  movers  in  opening  the  Bias  Cuevas 
school,  the  first  native  school  to  be  established  under 
the  direction  of  other  than  clerical  influence  and 
supervision,  while  for  the  first  ten  years  of  independent 
work  in  Valparaiso  he  and  Mrs.  Trumbull  entirely 
supported  themselves  by  maintaining  a  young  ladies' 

[225] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

school,  which  was  discontinued  with  regret  in  order 
that  he  might  devote  all  of  his  time  to  church  work, 
even  though  he  was  offered  much  less  than  he  was  then 
making  by  his  outside  work.  It  was  simply  surprising 
what  he  attempted  and  did,  with  no  air  of  haste  or 
apparent  expenditure  of  nervous  force,  but  quietly, 
calmly,  as  one  conscious  of  his  own  powers  and  the 
master  of  himself  and  of  the  situation. 

Doubtless  the  influence  Dr.  Trumbull  exerted  was 
due  in  some  degree  to  the  pecuHar  times  in  which 
he  lived.  He  was  a  splendid  fighter,  and  the  times 
demanded  this  type  of  man;  but  the  elements  were  so 
mixed  in  him  that  he  would  have  been  a  marked  man 
wherever  he  had  lived  and  whatever  might  have  been 
the  circumstances  in  which  his  lot  had  been  cast. 
His  power  was  to  be  found,  in  the  first  place,  in  his 
winsome  personality — the  gracious  smile,  the  genial 
humor,  the  delicate  tact  and  the  fine  courtesy  of  a 
gentleman  of  the  old  school ;  and  to  this  must  be  added 
the  kindest  of  hearts,  always  interested  ia  everyone's 
welfare,  and  desiring  that  all  men  should  be  helped 
and  saved. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  this  champion  of  the 
faith  would  be  harsh,  brusque,  aggressive,  and  that 
he  would  win  his  battles  by  dint  of  hard  blows. 
These  he  could  give ;  but  he  was  a  friend  of  everyone,  a 
gentleman  of  courtly  mien  and  a  born  diplomat. 
The  fact  that  he,  an  American,  nevertheless  was  for 
over  forty  years  the  successful  pastor  of  a  church  com- 
posed of  English  and  Scotch,  whose  national  eccentric- 
ities are  rather  increased  than  lessened  by  residence 
in  a  foreign  land,  speaks  volumes.     In  the  discussions 

[226] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

with  Casanova,  there  was  bitterness  and  personal  in- 
vective on  the  one  side — on  the  other,  the  spirit  that 
would  concihate  and  win  rather  than  crush  and  defeat. 

To  his  deep  interest  in  every  department  of  Chris- 
tian work  must  be  added  a  remarkable  genius  for 
organization.  Not  only  could  he  organize,  but  he 
could  also  direct  and  make  successful  every  task  he 
undertook.  He  held  in  his  hands  all  lines  of  Christian 
work  from  Callao  to  the  Straits,  molding  opinion, 
educating  the  conscience,  preaching  in  every  word  and 
act  Jesus  Christ,  the  Saviour,  and  exerting  an  influ- 
ence which  increased  with  the  passing  years. 

Great  as  were  Dr.  Trumbull's  services  to  the  Chris- 
tian Church  and  to  the  Chilean  people,  his  greatest 
power  lay  in  what  he  was.  The  mere  presence  of  such 
a  man  in  any  community  was  a  work.  It  cleansed 
the  atmosphere  which  men  breathed.  It  showed  all 
that  was  evil.  It  created  new  ideals  and  ambitions. 
Such  a  life  was  itself  an  achieving  energy.  His  affa- 
biHty,  his  merriment  and  good  humor,  his  fascination 
of  clean,  high-minded  fellowship,  his  wide  knowledge 
of  men,  his  practical  judgment,  his  unceasing  benevo- 
lence, his  energy,  were  all  dominated  by  a  resolute 
and  indomitable  but  ever-winning  and  affectionate 
purpose.  Dr.  John  Trumbull,  of  Valparaiso,  writes 
with  regard  to  his  father: 

As  I  look  back  upon  and  recall  the  past  it  seems  to  me  as 
though  the  factors  which  made  for  my  father's  successful 
rooting  in  hard  and  stony  ground  were  that,  apart  from 
mental  and  moral  endowments  of  no  mean  order,  he  had  the 
spirit  of  a  fighter  in  him,  associated  with  a  tenacity  of  pur- 
pose and  consecration  which  neither  could  nor  would 
ever  acknowledge  defeat;  and  that  these  qualities  were  hap- 

[227] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

pily  combined  with  unusual  social  gifts  whose  basis  was 
a  broad  genial  sympathy,  which  everywhere  opened  the  way 
so  that  his  consecrated  influence  might  have  free  play.  This 
it  was,  I  believe,  which  did  so  much  to  disarm  suspicion  and 
prepare  the  way  for  social  reforms  and  for  the  enactment  of 
laws,  or  interpretations  of  existing  laws,  so  as  to  compass 
religious  toleration  in  a  country  which  at  heart  was  hostile 
to  all  such  toleration. 

With  all  that  my  father  did,  he  ever  found  time  to  be  with 
and  help  his  children.  After  my  father  married  Jane  Wales 
Fitch,  a  niece  of  Eleazar  T.  Fitch,  professor  of  Divinity  at 
Yale,  in  1850,  they  came  out  to  Chile  on  an  independent 
basis,  supporting  themselves  by  conducting  a  young  ladies' 
school  for  eight  or  ten  years;  when,  at  the  request  of  Union 
Church,  he  consented  to  give  it  up  and  devote  himself  en- 
tirely to  pastoral  and  church  work,  though  they  were  only 
able  to  offer  as  a  salary  half  of  what  he  was  then  making. 
At  that  time  I  can  remember  that  we  had  to  give  up  horse- 
back riding — for  my  brother  David  and  I  had  been  in  the 
habit  of  riding  out  to  Fisherman's  Bay  every  morning  with 
father  for  a  dip  and  a  swim — in  fact,  I  was  but  five  when 
he  had  taught  us  to  swim,  and  even  to  jump  off  of 'the  spring- 
board into  deep  water — and  take  to  footing  it.  He  believed 
in  all  manly  sports,  which,  according  to  him,  included  every- 
thing but  shooting,  of  which  he  never  approved;  and  taught 
or  encouraged  us  to  walk,  run,  play  cricket,  ride,  climb, 
swim,  dive,  row,  fish,  cook,  and  so  forth.  On  holidays  we  often 
went  off  on  picnics  to  the  country  as  a  family,  or  up  the  hills 
and  ravines  back  of  Valparaiso,  and  were  taught,  like  the  Boy 
Scouts  of  the  present  day,  to  be  self-rehant  and  ready  for 
any  and  every  emergency. 

Winter  evenings  he  was  in  the  habit  of  reading  aloud 
to  us  Goldsmith's  ''Vicar  of  Wakefield";  Bunyan's  "Pil- 
grim's Progress";  Dickens'  "Nicholas  Nickleby";  Scott's 
"Old  MortaHty";  Irving's  "Knickerbocker  Stories"  and 
"Life  of  Washington." 

People  might  wonder  how  he  found  time  for  all  he  did. 
The  secret  of  it  was  that  he  ever  was  an  early  riser.     By  five 

[228] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

we  were  off  on  our  rides  or  walks,  and  before  that  he.  had  often 
got  in  an  hour's  work;  and  during  his  later  years  he  had  by 
eight  o'clock  already  done  a  good  day's  work. 

As  to  his  children,  it  was  often  said  the  Trumbull  children 
never  had  any  bringing  up — that,  like  Topsy,  they  simply 
grew  up.  Certainly  I  can  remember  but  two  trouncings — 
one  for  playing  with  matches  at  bonfires  on  the  shingle  roof 
of  our  house,  which,  as  firemen,  we  had  to  extinguish;  and 
again  for  playing  with  my  brother  at  WilHam  Tell,  using  a 
potato  which  we  alternately  balanced  on  our  heads,  and  an 
old-fashioned  musket — loaded,  by  the  way,  it  was  claimed — 
on  which  we  used  up  a  box  half  full  of  caps.  That  it  might 
have  been  loaded  was  possible,  for  my  father  had  once  had, 
in  Isaac  Wheelwright's  young  ladies'  school,  an  experience  un- 
aided and  by  his  active  wit,  of  having  frightened  and  held  off 
a  gang  of  robbers,  after  they  had  entered,  with  a  machete 
cut  open  Mr.  Wheelright's  head  and  frightened  the  Httle 
boy  so  that  he  had  crawled  up  the  fireplace  chimney.  To 
show  that  my  father's  discipline  was  guided  by  a  tactful 
wisdom  it  might  be  worth  while  to  record  that  when,  as  a  boy 
just  fifteen  years  of  age,  I  was  sent  off  alone  to  the  United 
States,  after  kneeling  in  prayer,  the  only  sermon  which  I  got 
was  the  following:  "John,  my  boy,  there  is  only  one  fear  that 
I  have  in  your  going  from  home;  and  that  is,  that,  since  you 
are  so  good-natured  and  ready  to  please,  you  may  not  have 
the  manliness  to  say  'No.'"  That  remark  drove  home,  as 
you  can  well  understand,  for  once  a  boy  realizes  the  coward- 
liness of  yielding  to  temptation  the  battle  against  it  is  more 
than  half  won,  and  I  am  free  to  acknowledge  that  that  did 
more  to  stiffen  my  moral  backbone  than  any  other  spoken 
word  I  ever  heard. 

We  were  a  large  family — four  boys  and  three  girls  who  Hved 
to  grow  up.  All  of  the  boys  were  sent  to  Yale  and  studied 
professions,  while  the  girls  went  either  to  Wellesley  or  North- 
ampton, and  sent,  too,  by  a  pastor  who  had  no  private  means. 
Good  business  instincts  he  had,  and  that  helped;  but  what 
really  enabled  him  to  give  his  children  an  education  was  that 
he  ^nd  my  mother  were  willing  to  take  in  young  Englishmen 

[229] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

as  boarders,  giving  them  a  home  and  at  the  same  time  re- 
ceiving payment,  so  as  to  let  their  children  have  an  educa- 
tion. On  that  he  laid  great  stress,  saying  that  all  his  desire 
was  to  give  us  an  education,  and  let  us  "shift  without  a 
penny." 

As  a  preacher  he  was  direct  and  forcible.  He  often  laugh- 
ingly said  the  only  way  to  interest  Scotchmen  was  to  preach 
clean  over  their  heads.  That  gave  them  something  to  think 
about  and  wonder  at;  but  his  kindliness  was  such  that  after 
thundering  denunciation  always  came  the  kindly  appeal  of 
the  gospel  invitation.  In  his  pastoral  relations  his  fine  tact, 
genial  humor,  apt  reminiscence  or  telling  story  made  him  a 
universal  favorite — one  whose  visits  were  welcomed,  whose 
smile  was  a  benediction,  whose  uprightness  was  uncom- 
promising, whose  rebukes  were  telling,  and  yet  whose  words 
of  sympathy  brought  cheer  and  comfort  to  those  in  trouble, 
because  he  himself  had  been  through  the  deep  waters,  knew 
whereof  he  spoke  and  entered  fully  into  the  sorrows  of  his 
people. 

The  sunshine  of  his  life  was  not  an  easy  and  un- 
tested thing.  It  was  there  in  spite  of  heavy  shadows 
which  had  fallen  across  it.  He  had  lost  children  in 
infancy  and  ''later  in  life  experienced  a  burden  of 
threefold  bereavement.  Their  eldest  son,  David, 
following  his  father  in  the  ministry  and  a  student  in 
Yale  Theological  School,  was  drowned  at  New  London 
in  saving  a  boy's  life.  He  sprang  from  a  yacht  to  get 
the  boy  and,  there  being  no  small  boat,  it  took  so  much 
time  to  tack  that  when  they  reached  for  the  boy 
whom  he  had  supported,  David  sank.  Mary,  a  gifted 
graduate  of  Wellesley,  lived  but  a  short  time  after 
reaching  home.  Stephen,  a  graduate  physician,  on 
the  way  home  contracted  yellow  fever  and  died  at 
sea.    These  in  the  fair  hope  and  promise  of  youth 

[230] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

were  taken  and  the  devoted  father  and  mother  pa- 
tiently, trustfully,  went  on  seeking  to  comfort  others 
in  the  sure  hope  of  the  Hfe  to  come." 

The  sunshine  outshone  every  shadow,  and  the 
patient  will  wore  down  all  opposition  because  the 
faith  in  God  and  in  the  old  and  enduring  truth  of  the 
gospel  was  firm  and  unwavering.  Mr.  Dodge,  in 
the  memorial  sermon  preached  in  the  Union  Church 
on  February  lo,  1889,  referred  to  other  qualities 
which  had  characterized  Dr.  Trumbull,  and  then 
passed  on  from  these  to  dwell  upon  his  old-fashioned 
sturdiness  and  reaHty  of  rehgious  faith: 

His  capacity  for  work  was  remarkable  under  a  sense  of  the 
preciousness  of  opportunity  such  as  few  men  manifest. 
His  elasticity  and  genial  nature  can  only  be  appreciated  by 
those  who  knew  how  carefully  he  sought  for  the  bright 
light  in  the  darkest  cloud,  and  believed  in  the  thankful 
"merry  heart"  which  a  pure  conscience  and  a  strong  faith 
assure.  Few  men  in  this  world  have  heavier  burdens  of 
care  and  sorrow  than  he  had,  yet  he  murmured  not.  Religion 
to  him  was  more  than  an  elevated  sentiment,  more  than  moral 
persuasion  or  conviction;  it  was  an  experience,  a  daily  force 
in  his  life,  a  source  of  strength  and  consolation.  In  our  hfe 
together  we  often  dwelt  upon  some  of  the  profound  subjects 
of  religious  thought  and  inquiry.  As  a  theologian,  Dr.  Trum- 
bull was  too  thorough  and  skillful  to  accept  anything  short  of 
conclusions  which  embraced  satisfactorily  all  the  conditions 
and  phases  of  given  questions.  He  looked  too  deeply  into 
the  problem  of  human  life  to  apologize  for  sin.  He  knew 
that  God  should  be  honored  by  a  true  obedience,  and  the 
sacrifice  of  Christ  was  to  him  a  real  atonement. 

David  Trumbull  felt  personally  the  power  of  Him  whose 
touch  opened  the  eyes  of  the  bhnd;  Jesus  was  to  him  not 
only  his  Teacher,  but  his  Redeemer,  and  so  he  preached  Christ 
and  him  crucified,  the  pure,  unchanged  gospel  that  this  poor 

[231] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

worla  needs.  Would  you  know  the  source  of  his  strength, 
the  power  that  molded  that  consecrated  life — behold  it  in 
Jesus  Christ  uplifted! 

"He  whom  love  rules,  where'er  his  path  may  be, 
Walks  safe  and  sacred." 

He  loved  his  Saviour,  he  lived  to  honor  God,  and  this  is  the 
true  explanation  of  the  religious  heroism,  of  the  good  fight 
of  faith,  of  the  patriotic,  noble,  lovable,  sympathizing  char- 
acter to  which  so  many  justly  render  sincere  homage  this 
day. 

He  never  pleaded  ignorance  of  responsibility;  he  sought  to 
know  responsibility,  and  the  better  he  knew  it,  the  more 
earnestly  he  labored,  not  for  earthly  praise,  but  for  the  "Well 
done,  thou  good  and  faithful  servant,"  which  he  has  now 
received.  Yet  through  the  honor  we  render  to  his  memory, 
let  his  confession  of  weakness  be  remembered.  This  would 
be  his  wish.  He  also  was  a  man.  His  one  prayer  was  to 
obtain  the  perfect  victory  through  Christ,  and  oh,  my  brethren, 
if  we  with  his  constancy  pray  for  forgiveness  and  help,  the 
peace  that  passeth  all  understanding  will  be  ours. 

In  his  humble  self -distrust  he  knew  where  to  go  for 
the  strength  which  can  prevail  and  which  will  not  be 
denied.  In  a  letter  to  the  Board  on  January  i,  1874, 
he  wrote: 

And  now  let  us  unite  in  diligent  supplication  to  God  for 
the  coming  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  without  whose  aid  our  work 
languishes.  This  is  to-day  our  greatest  deficiency.  We 
wield  the  sword,  but  men  are  not  wounded;  we  draw  the  bow, 
but  the  arrows  glance  from  the  armor  of  those  wrapped  in 
worldliness  and  unbelief.  Prophesy  we  do,  but  tokens  of  Hfe 
are  wanting  almost  entirely;  and  one  great  reason  is  that  the 
throne  of  grace  is  not  besieged — prayer  is  restrained  here 
and  at  home  among  the  churches  by  which  the  laborers  have 
been  sent.  Oh,  if  my  voice  may  reach  pastors,  office  bearers 
and  people,  let  me  conjure  them  to  take  hold  on  Him  of  whom 

[232] 


DAVID  TRUMBULL 

it  is  said  that  he  will  ''avenge  his  own  elect,  which  cry  day 
and  night  unto  him."  Let  us  besiege  the  mercy  seat.  Here 
the  way  is  now  open.  The  truth  may  be  uttered  and  printed, 
but  God  must  be  importuned  to  direct  the  shafts  between 
the  joints  of  the  harness,  till,  sticking  fast  in  the  hearts  of  the 
King's  enemies,  they  make  wounds  for  heahng  which  it  shall 
be  necessary  to  apply  to  Christ. 

Whither  he  wished  to  drive  others,  there,  in  Christ, 
he  himself  lived,  and  living  there  he  did  the  work  which 
I  have  recorded  here  and  which  is  commemorated  in 
the  inscription  on  the  great  stone  in  the  cemetery  in 
Valparaiso: 

MEMORISE   SACRUM 

The  Reverend 

David  Trumbull,  D.D. 

Founder  and  Minister  of  the  Union  Church,  Valparaiso. 

Born  in  Elizabeth,  N.  J.,  ist  of  Nov.,  1819. 

Died  in  Valparaiso,  ist  of  Feb.,  1899. 

For  forty-three  years  he  gave  himself  to  unwearied  and 

successful  effort 
In  the  cause  of  evangehcal  truth  and  religious  hberty  in 

this  country. 
As  a  gifted  and  faithful    minister,  and  as  a  friend  he 

was  honored  and 
Loved  by  foreign  residents  on  this  coast.     In  his  pubHc 

life  he  was  the 

Counselor  of  statesmen,   the  supporter  of  every  good 

enterprise,  the 

Helper  of  the  poor,  and  the  consoler  of  the  afflicted. 

In  memory  of 

His  eminent  services,  fidehty,  charity  and  sympathy 

This  monument 

Has  been  raised  by  his  friends  in  this  community 

And  by  citizens  of  his  adopted  country. 

[233] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

May  such  a  life,  so  steadfast  and  so  powerful,  be 
a  summons  to  us  to  abide  each  in  his  right  place  with- 
out wavering  and  changeableness,  and  to  dare  to 
attempt  by  love  and  influence  the  achievement  even 
of  the  impossible.  No  man  of  us  need  despair  of  the 
hardest  task  if  we  will  be  patient  and  true  and  calmly 
await  the  sure  issue  which  is  with  God.  What  God 
did  through  David  Trumbull  in  Chile  is  proof  that 
nothing  is  too  hard  for  him  to  do  through  any  man 
who  will  wait  steadfastly  upon  him. 


[234] 


STUDY  SIX 


[235] 


RuFus  Anderson 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

THE  FOREMOST  AMERICAN  MISSIONARY  ADMIN- 
ISTRATOR 


RuFUS  Anderson  was  the  most  original,  the  most 
constructive  and  the  most  courageous  student  of 
missionary  policy  whom  this  country  has  produced, 
and  one  of  the  two  most  aggressive  and  creative  ad- 
ministrators of  missionary  work.  He  was  born  at 
North  Yarmouth,  Maine,  August  17,  1796,  and  was 
graduated  from  Bowdoin  College  in  18 18  and  from 
Andover  Theological  Seminary  in  1822.  During  his 
senior  year  in  the  Seminary  he  was  called  to  supply 
the  place  of  Mr.  Evarts,  then  the  corresponding  secre- 
tary of  the  American  Board,  during  a  visit  of  the  latter 
to  the  Indian  missions.  In  the  autumn  of  1822,  after 
his  graduation  from  the  Seminary,  he  became  assistant 
to  Mr.  Evarts  and  then  assistant  secretary.  His  work 
was  in  connection  with  the  foreign  correspondence  of 
the  Board,  and  in  1832  he  was  made  one  of  three  co- 
ordinate secretaries  and  given  entire  charge  of  the 
correspondence  with  the  missions.  This  position  he 
filled  for  thirty-four  years,  until  1866.  From  1866  to 
1875  he  served  as  a  member  of  the  Prudential  Com- 
mittee, i.  e.,  the  Executive  Committee  of  the  Board, 
the  Board  having  only  annual  sessions  and  its  business 
being  done  by  the  Prudential  Committee.     In  1875 

[»37] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

he  resigned  from  the  Committee  and  on  May  30, 1880, 
was  gathered  in  the  ripeness  of  a  great,  rich  Hfe  to  the 
fellowship  of  the  missionary  fathers  who  had  gone 
before  him. 

In  his  letter  of  resignation  of  the  secretaryship  he 
briefly  surveyed  his  stewardship,  the  blessing  of  God 
which  had  rested  upon  the  Board  and  the  great  growth 
of  the  forty-four  years  of  his  active  official  service: 

Remembering  how  slender  were  my  prospects  of  life  on 
entering  the  service  of  the  Board,  I  wonder  at  being  spared 
so  long.  My  years  have  all  been,  of  necessity,  years  of  in- 
cessant toil,  with  but  little  time  for  social  intercourse  or  for 
relaxation,  even  in  the  heat  of  summer;  and,  I  may  add,  with 
a  salary  that  admitted  of  but  few  indulgences.  The  salary 
was,  however,  as  much  as  we  thought  it  expedient  for  a 
secretary  of  the  Board  to  receive.  .  .  . 

Forty-four  years  constitute  a  large  portion  of  the  life  of  the 
Board.  At  the  beginning  of  this  period  its  oldest  mission 
had  been  established  but  eight  years,  and  it  had  then  only 
seven  missions.  Its  ordained  missionaries  were  twenty-four. 
.  .  .  The  receipts  of  that  year  were  sixty-one  thousand  dol- 
lars, and  it  is  remarkable  that  there  was  then  a  balance  in 
the  treasury  of  thirty-four  thousand  dollars. 

I  find  that  every  missionary  of  the  Board  now  in  the  field, 
excepting  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Spaulding,  of  Ceylon,  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Thurston,  of  the  Sandwich  Islands,  and  Messrs.  Kingsbury 
and  Byington,  of  the  Choctaw  Mission,  went  forth  during  my 
connection  with  it.  The  whole  number,  since  my  connec- 
tion with  the  Board,  exceeds  twelve  hundred,  and  more  than 
eight  hundred  of  these  went  either  to  form  or  to  strengthen 
missions  beyond  the  seas.  More  than  four  hundred  were 
ordained  missionaries.  The  seven  missions  have  increased 
to  twenty,  embracing  a  hundred  stations,  and  two  hundred 
and  forty  outstations,  occupied  by  native  helpers.  The 
native  ministry  is  almost  wholly  the  product  of  the  last  forty 
years,  and  now  numbers  more  than  three  hundred,  of  whom 

[238] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

somewhat  more  than  sixty  are  pastors  of  churches.  The 
churches  formed  have  been  scarcely  less  than  two  hundred, 
into  which  considerably  more  than  sixty  thousand  hopeful 
converts  have  been  received.  .  .  .  The  receipts  have  risen 
from  sixty-one  thousand  dollars  to  five  hundred  and  thirty- 
four  thousand  dollars  for  the  year  ending  in  1865.  .  .  . 

Never  have  I  had  stronger  assurance  than  now  of  the 
ultimate  triumph  of  the  missionary  cause.  Its  progress  seems 
to  me  to  be  as  certain  as  that  of  trade,  or  knowledge,  or  free- 
dom of  thought  and  action.  With  the  world  open  to  evan- 
gelical effort  as  it  never  was  before,  the  truly  evangehcal 
churches  will  be  less  and  less  able  to  disregard  the  spiritually 
benighted  nations;  and  all  such  churches  will  realize,  more 
and  more,  that  to  labor  for  the  extension  of  Christ's  kingdom 
through  the  world  is  indispensable  to  their  own  spiritual 
prosperity.  .  .  . 

I  feel  conscious  of  great  imperfection  in  all  my  public 
services,  and  have  little  pleasure  in  the  retrospect,  except  as 
I  find  in  it  the  evidence  of  the  abounding  grace  of  God,  and 
of  his  readiness  to  bless  even  the  humblest  efforts  to  promote 
his  holy  cause.  Thankful  for  the  privilege  of  spending  my 
life  in  such  a  service,  I  cannot  refrain  from  the  expression  of 
a  wish  that  larger  numbers  of  our  young  ministers,  of  piety, 
talent  and  learning,  would  devote  themselves  to  the  work  of 
foreign  missions.  They  would  never  have  occasion  to  regret 
it.  Nor  can  I  doubt  that  they  will  make  this  self-consecra- 
tion, at  the  call  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  who  will  have  his 
gospel  preached  in  "all  the  world"  and  *'to  every  creature"; 
and  who  has  shown,  by  unmistakable  indications  of  his 
providence,  that  the  time  for  this  great  and  blessed  work  has 
fully  come. 

This  dignified  and  impersonal  letter  truly  reveals 
the  man.  The  work  of  missionary  administration 
constituted  his  life  work.  He  gave  to  it  all  his 
strength,  never  looking  to  the  right  hand  or  to  the 
left.    He  concentrated  all  his  great  powers  upon  the 

[239] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

task  to  which  God  had  clearly  called  him.  His  por- 
trait shows  the  benignity  of  his  spirit,  and  his  papers 
bear  evidence  of  the  calm,  direct,  forceful,  unflinching 
and  just  processes  of  his  mind.  His  home,  as  his  son 
recalls  it,  was  a  missionary  lodging  place  through 
which  passed  continually  the  streams  of  the  Board's 
missionaries,  as  they  came  and  went,  and  the  tax  on 
his  small  resources  and  on  Mrs.  Anderson's  strength 
was  constant  and  excessive.  In  his  letter  of  resigna- 
tion he  recognized  with  careful  reserve  what  she  had 
been  and  done:  ''Of  her  unwearied  hospitalities  to 
missionaries  and  their  children  and  her  other  import- 
ant services  to  the  cause,  regard  for  her  feeHngs  for- 
bids my  speaking  in  this  presence."  He  always 
viewed  his  own  ofhce  as  similar  in  character  and 
principle  to  that  of  the  men  who  went  out  to  the 
field,  and  regarded  himself  ever  as  one  of  them.  He 
was  as  among  brethren,  not  a  master  or  overseer,  but 
as  a  helper  and  friend. 

It  is  a  great  misfortune  that  we  have  no  biography 
of  Dr.  Anderson.  There  is  not  even  a  short  sketch  of 
his  life,  except  the  funeral  address.  We  have  biog- 
raphies of  half-a-dozen  other  American  missionary 
secretaries,  but  none  of  the  greatest  of  them  all.  We 
are  concerned  here,  however,  not  with  biographical 
facts,  but  with  lessons  of  character  and  ideal.  And 
we  have  clear  enough  presentations  of  his  character, 
while  his  own  ample  writings  embody  his  principles. 
Dr.  N.  G.  Clark,  his  successor  in  the  secretaryship, 
summarized  in  simple  and  affectionate  terms  his 
qualities  of  personality  in  an  address  in  the  Eliot 
Church  in  Roxbury  at  the  funeral: 

[240] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

Dr.  Anderson  brought  to  the  service  of  the  Board  a  re- 
markable dignity  of  personal  bearing,  a  loftiness  of  purpose 
and  singleness  of  devotion,  which  well  befitted  the  work.  .  .  . 

On  the  high  place  of  observation  where  Dr.  Anderson  stood 
he  was  sometimes  alone,  sometimes  misunderstood.  If  his 
moral  elevation  compelled  the  respect  and  reverence  of  all 
who  knew  him,  yet  to  those  who  knew  him  least  it  made  him 
seem  at  times  cold  and  distant,  indifferent  to  pubHc  opinion. 
But  those  who  knew  him  better  knew  that  underneath  that 
calm  and  self-contained  demeanor  was  a  heart  tenderly  alive 
to  criticism  and  to  public  opinion.  .  .  . 

The  two  leading  characteristics  of  his  life  were  a  profound, 
controlling  sense  of  duty — duty  to  God,  to  his  cause  and  to 
his  official  position,  and  a  subhme  faith  in  the  ultimate 
triumph  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ.  .  .  . 

He  had  faith  in  God — in  his  plan  of  redemption,  in  the 
agencies  he  was  employing  to  carry  it  out,  in  his  providence 
to  open  the  way — and  in  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  in  living 
Christian  men  and  women  regenerated  by  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Some  of  us  who  have  known  him  more  intimately  have  at 
times  been  startled  by  the  boldness  of  his  suggestions  and 
plans.  Bold  they  were,  to  men  of  more  cautious  mold,  but 
not  to  him,  who  could  never  dream  of  any  obstacle  that  should 
stand  in  the  way  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 


Of  some  of  these  qualities  we  shall  have  fuller  evi- 
dence in  what  will  be  set  forth  later,  but  I  may  speak 
now  in  passing  of  the  dignity  and  gravity  of  his  tem- 
per to  which  Dr.  Clark  referred.  Some  one  asked 
him  once  for  his  opiaion  on  a  certain  subject  "not 
in  his  official  capacity,"  to  which  he  replied,  ''The 
secretary  of  the  American  Board  is  always  in  his  offi- 
cial capacity."  I  have  been  told  that  when  he  was 
on  a  visit  to  the  Syria  mission  this  habitual  loftiness 
of  spirit  and  manner  made  a  deep  impression.     On  a 


y 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

journey  between  two  of  the  stations  he  was  riding 
along  on  horseback,  erect,  sober,  with  tile  hat  and 
long  coat,  when  the  party  met  an  Arab  riding  in.  The 
man  drew  off  to  the  side  of  the  road  and  stopped  to 
watch  the  missionary  party  go  by.  As  Dr.  Anderson 
passed  in  his  dignity  the  Arab  was  heard  to  exclaim 
to  himself,  "What  a  wonderful  work  of  God!"  It 
might  be  better  for  us  if  we  had  not  moved  so  far 
away  from  the  grave  decorum  and  earnestness  of  the 
older  day.  I  have  heard  of  visits  to  mission  fields 
to-day  in  which  the  want  of  dignity  left  behind  a  bad 
impression;  and  here  at  home  we  should  not  suffer 
from  such  a  reaction  from  our  jesting  and  foolish  talk- 
ing as  might  recover  for  us  some  of  the  sobriety  of  Dr. 
Anderson's  day,  which,  it  is  abundantly  clear,  did  not 
lack  in  intellectual  shrewdness  and  vitaHty. 

As  I  have  intimated.  Dr.  Anderson's  experience 
as  a  secretary  included  visits  to  the  missions  abroad. 
From  the  beginning  the  poHcy  of  the  American  Board 
wisely  provided  for  such  visits. 

It  was  on  his  return  from  Turkey  and  Greece  in 
1829  and  on  the  occasion  of  his  making  a  report  at 
the  United  Monthly  Concert  in  Park  Street  Church 
that  the  choir  sang  for  the  first  time  in  pubHc,  just 
as  he  closed  his  statement,  the  hymn  ''Watchman, 
Tell  Us  of  the  Night,"  to  the  new  but  now  famous 
tune  of  Dr.  Lowell  Mason,  who  was  the  director  of 
the  choir. 

His  visits  included  Greece  and  Asia  in  1828-29  and 
again  in  1844,  India  and  Turkey  in  1854-55  and 
the  Sandwich  Islands  in  1863.  These  visits  were 
models  of  what  such  visits  should  be.    Careful  out_ 

[242] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

lines  of  the  subjects  to  be  discussed  were  prepared. 
Ample  time  was  allowed.  In  the  report  of  the  tour 
to  India  he  said: 

On  reaching  a  mission  our  first  business  was  to  visit  the 
several  stations,  that  we  might  gain  an  accurate  acquaintance 
with  them  by  a  free,  personal  intercourse  with  our  brethren. 
The  object  of  this  visit  was  not  to  discuss  questions  of  mission 
policy,  but  to  perfect  our  knowledge  of  facts,  and  to  ascer- 
tain the  individual  impressions  of  our  brethren  as  to  the 
proper  method  of  dealing  with  the  facts.  In  this,  which  was 
the  most  laborious  part  of  our  duty,  we  were  generally  very 
successful;  and  this  was  an  essential  preparation  of  our  own 
minds  for  the  protracted  meetings  of  the  missions  which 
followed. 

In  these  mission  meetings  the  subjects  were  opened, 
and  after  full  discussion  were  referred  to  committees 
appointed  prior  to  the  discussion  to  formulate  the 
general  view. 

The  members  of  the  deputation  neither  served  on  com- 
mittees nor  voted  on  the  reports,  but  reserved  to  them- 
selves and  to  the  Prudential  Committee  the  adoption,  or 
otherwise,  of  the  opinions  and  recommendations  embodied  in 
the  reports. 

I  do  not  know  of  any  more  serviceable  discussions 
of  questions  of  mission  policy  than  these  committee 
reports  which  the  deputation  printed  with  its  own 
report.  The  deputation  itself  did  nothing  but  draw 
out  the  missionaries  and  lead  them  on  to  views  which 
would  stand  the  tests  of  prayer  and  reasoning.  The 
result  was  that  what  could  be  shown  to  be  wise  and 
right  was  everywhere  accepted  as  such.  So  powerful 
was  the  influence  of  this  deputation  that  before  it 

[^43] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

reached  America  reports  had  preceded  it,  and  many 
at  home  were  alarmed  at  what  seemed  to  them  to  be 
the  possible  usurpation  of  authority  by  the  Pru- 
dential Committee  and  its  representatives.  A  special 
meeting  of  the  Board  was  called  to  hear  the  report 
of  the  deputation  and  to  consider  the  matter,  and  a 
special  committee  was  appointed  to  communicate 
with  the  missions,  to  investigate  the  course  of  the 
deputation  and  to  report  to  this  special  meeting  of  the 
Board.  It  is  needless  to  say  thar  Dr.  Anderson 
welcomed  all  such  consideration  of  mission  problems. 
He  loved  light,  and  came  to  the  Ught  that  his  deeds 
might  be  made  manifest  that  they  were  wrought  in 
God.  The  special  meeting  entirely  vindicated  the 
deputation  and  spread  through  the  church  a  far  better 
knowledge  of  the  deeper  problems  of  missionary  policy. 
The  correspondence  from  the  missionaries  effectually 
dispelled  the  idea  that  the  Prudential  Committee  and 
Dr.  Anderson  were  lording  it  over  the  judgment  of  the 
missions.  Dr.  H.  G.  O.  Dwight  wrote  from  Con- 
stantinople: 

I  have  never  noticed,  either  in  the  Prudential  Committee 
or  in  the  secretaries,  the  slightest  disposition  to  exercise  any 
undue  authority  over  us.  On  the  contrary,  they  accede 
almost  invariably  to  whatever  the  mission,  as  such,  recom- 
mends; and  I  really  think  that,  as  things  are  now  constituted 
and  ever  have  been,  there  is  far  more  danger  of  the  mis- 
sions' overshadowing  the  Prudential  Committee  than  there 
is  of  the  committee's  overshadowing  the  missions.  I  have 
been  acquainted  with  the  operations  of  several  other  socie- 
ties, and  I  know  of  not  one  in  which  so  much  power  is  left  in 
the  hands  of  the  missions,  and  in  which  there  is  so  little  in- 
terference from  home. 

[244] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

As  to  our  senior  secretary,  I  may  say  to  you,  what  delicacy 
would  forbid  me  to  write  to  the  Missionary  House,  that  I  have 
known  him  well  for  twenty-six  years,  and  I  know  of  no  one 
less  disposed  to  exercise  authority  than  he.  In  all  his  official 
intercourse  with  us,  whether  by  letter  or  by  personal  visita- 
tion— and  he  has  been  here  twice — it  has  been  always  trans- 
parently evident  that  he  wished  to  be  governed  himself, 
and  to  have  us  governed,  by  facts  and  substantial  arguments. 
He  brings  to  the  discussion  of  every  missionary  question  a 
mind  clear,  systematic  and  comprehensive;  rich  in  the  stores 
of  a  long  and  well-husbanded  experience  and  deeply  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  primitive  Christianity.  Of  course,  such  a 
man  must  have  positive  opinions,  and  who  would  desire 
to  see  one  in  his  position  that  had  not?  But  I  have  never 
discovered  in  him  the  slightest  incHnation  to  domineer. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that,  to  a  mind  complacent  in 
itself  and  unwiUing  to  yield,  no  greater  weapons  of  tyranny 
can  appear  than  strong  facts  and  arguments,  and,  so  far  as 
my  knowledge  goes.  Dr.  Anderson  has  never  wielded  any 
other  weapons  of  tyranny  than  these. 

Good  old  Dr.  Goodell  wrote: 

The  only  expressions  I  have  ever  heard  from  my  brethren 
and  sisters  in  reference  to  his  visit  here  have  been  those  of 
thankfulness.  We  needed  his  help  to  do  certain  things,  which, 
though  we  wished  to  have  done,  we  felt  incompetent  to  do 
ourselves;  but  we  have  now  done  them,  and  we  are  glad.  .  .  . 

In  conducting  missions  on  a  large  scale  there  must  neces- 
sarily be  much  power  and  authority  vested  somewhere,  and 
power  is  always  dangerous. 

But  most  disastrous  effects  would  follow  the  taking  away 
of  this  power.  I  would  rather  see  it  increased  than  dimin- 
ished. I  hope,  therefore,  every  precaution  will  be  taken  in 
the  present  controversy  not  to  weaken  the  authority  of  those 
to  whom  is  committed  the  great  responsibihty  of  directing 
and  superintending  this  great  enterprise  of  the  Christian 
Church. 

[245] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

This  is  the  only  kind  of  authority  that  is  worth  any- 
thing among  brethren  who  are  true  men.  External 
authority  may  be  good  among  unequal  men,  but  even 
then  suppose  the  inferior  man  is  in  the  place  of  author- 
ity? The  true  authority  is  the  authority  of  Hght  and 
truth.  What  we  can  persuade  or  convince  men  of, 
about  that  we  can  feel  secure.  When  anything  can- 
not be  carried  forward  by  its  own  power  of  truth  and 
reasonableness,  we  ought  to  mistrust  its  warrant  for 
being  carried  forward  at  all. 

It  is  time  to  turn  now  to  some  of  Anderson's  views, 
his  discussions  of  mission  problems  in  home  admin- 
istration and  in  foreign  correspondence. 

There  was  no  Student  Volunteer  Movement  in 
these  early  days.  All  the  principles  of  the  move- 
ment were,  however,  clearly  seen  and  earnestly  grasped. 
The  Haystack  Band,  the  early  company  at  Andover, 
and  the  secretaries  of  the  American  Board,  all  dis- 
cerned the  fundamental  principles  of  missionary 
enHstment  and  acted  upon  them.  The  desirabihty  of 
answering  early  the  question  of  missionary  duty,  and 
not  postponing  it  until  the  end  of  the  theological  semi- 
nary course,  was  argued  by  Dr.  Anderson  in  a  tract 
entitled  ''On  Deciding  Early  to  Become  a  Missionary 
to  the  Heathen."  This  is  the  way  he  opens  the 
argument: 

The  object  of  this  tract  is  to  assign  reasons  in  favor  of  the 
following  proposition,  viz.:  That  every  student,  looking 
forward  to  the  sacred  ministry,  should  decide  early,  in  view 
of  existing  circumstances,  whether  duty  requires  him  to  be- 
come a  missionary  to  the  heathen. 

I  have  my  mind  upon  a  current  maxim  which  has  de- 
[246] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

prived  the  heathen  world,  I  fear,  of  many  excellent  mis- 
sionaries. The  maxim  is  this,  ''That  it  is  better  to  delay- 
deciding  on  our  personal  duty  to  the  heathen  till  near  the 
close  of  our  studies  preparatory  to  the  ministry."  The 
reasons  for  such  a  delay  are  plausible.  The  student  will  be 
older — his  judgment  more  matured — his  mind  better  in- 
formed— the  whole  case  more  completely  before  him.  My 
appeal,  however,  is  to  facts.  For  many  years  I  have  watched 
the  operation  of  this  maxim,  and  I  am  sure  that  its  influence 
is  to  prevent  a  thorough  and  impartial  examination.  The 
procrastination  which  it  requires  becomes  a  habit,  and  is 
usually  too  long  persisted  in.  The  "  more  convenient  season  " 
for  investigation  is  generally  allowed  to  pass  by.  Engage- 
ments are  formed  rendering  the  case  more  complicated; 
soHcitations  and  inducements  to  remain  at  home  multiply; 
the  natural  love  of  one's  own  country  grows  stronger  and 
stronger;  the  early  predilection  for  the  missionary  Hfe,  if 
there  had  been  one,  wears  away;  the  cries  of  the  heathen  and 
their  distress  move  with  less  and  less  power;  and  the  man 
remains  at  home — not  as  the  result  of  any  vigorous  exercise 
of  the  understanding  upon  the  question  of  duty,  but  because 
he  decided  to  postpone  consideration  upon  it  till  he  was  about 
to  launch  into  the  world,  and  then  surrendered  himself 
passively  to  the  control  of  circumstances. 

This  is  not  the  way  to  learn  our  duty  on  the  momentous 
question,  "Where  is  the  field  and  the  work  to  which  the 
Holy  Ghost  hath  called  me?"  And  what  inquiry  is  there 
which  can  be  more  important  than  this  to  our  growth  in 
grace,  and  to  our  happiness  and  usefulness  in  future  life? 
And  what  more  directly  connected  with  the  sentence  to  be 
passed  upon  us,  at  the  great  day,  as  the  stewards  of  Christ? 
Next  to  the  relation  which  we  sustain  to  the  Lord  Jesus, 
there  is  nothing  we  are  more  interested  to  know,  as  his  min- 
isters, than  where  he  would  have  us  spend  our  lives;  where 
the  field  is  which  he  commands  us  to  cultivate;  and  where 
the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Comforter,  will  complacently  regard 
our  residence  and  delight  to  bless  our  exertions  and  alleviate 
our  trials.     Is  there  not  a  foundation  for  soHcitude  on  this 

[247] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

point?  Can  it  be  a  matter  of  perfect  indifference  to  the  Head 
of  the  Church  where  we  preach,  provided  only  we  are  diligent, 
and  preach  the  truth?  It  was  not  so  in  respect  to  the  apostles; 
nor  is  it  so  now.  Mistakes  on  this  subject,  when  committed 
needlessly,  much  more  when  committed  because  we  will  not 
consider,  must  have  a  very  serious  bearing  upon  us  as  min- 
isters of  the  gospel. 

Then  he  proceeds  to  show  that  it  is  no  objection  to 
early  decision  that  it  must  be  conditional  upon  the 
Lord's  will.  Any  decision,  early  or  late,  must  be  so 
conditioned.  Next  he  answers  the  objection  to  setting 
off  the  foreign  field  as  distinct  from  the  home  field. 
It  is  not  he  but  the  facts  which  create  the  distinc- 
tion.   Then  he  proceeds  to  the  points  of  his  argument: 

1.  In  college,  and  sometimes  in  the  academy,  the  student 
may  enjoy  nearly  or  quite  all  the  helps  in  forming  a  decision 
that  he  will  find  in  the  theological  seminary.  .  .  .  Indeed,  I 
believe  the  student  may  not  only  ascertain  his  personal  duty 
to  the  heathen  at  an  early  period  of  his  education,  but  that 
he  may  then  ascertain  it  with  comparative  ease — being,  in 
some  respects,  more  favorably  situated  for  deciding  cor- 
rectly than  at  the  more  advanced  periods.  The  subject  is 
really  very  simple;  and  it  is  most  apt  to  appear  so  to  the 
student  while  his  position  is  remote  from  the  world.  He, 
too,  is  then  more  entirely  uncommitted;  and  his  views  of  the 
comparative  claims  of  the  heathen  world  upon  himself  will 
be  more  Kkely  to  accord  with  what  is  the  usual  fact  than  in 
the  later  stages. 

2.  An  early  decision  is  desirable  in  reference  to  its  bearing 
on  the  mind  and  conscience  of  the  student. 

3.  A  student  who  decides  early  to  devote  himself  to  the 
cause  of  foreign  missions  will  be  more  useful  to  that  cause 
during  his  studies  preparatory  to  the  ministry  than  he 
otherwise  would  be.  ...  If  a  man  is  led  by  his  views  of  duty 
heartily  to  consecrate  himself  to  the  work  of  evangelizing 

[248] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

the  heathen,  such  a  man  begins  immediately  to  think,  with  a 
special  interest,  how  he  may  increase  the  number  of  mis- 
sionaries, and  the  means  of  sending  them  forth,  and  how  the 
deep  intellectual  and  moral  gloom  resting  upon  the  heathen 
world  may  be  dispelled.  There  is  no  estimating  how  desir- 
able it  is  that  every  college  and  seminary  in  the  land  have 
such  men  among  its  students.  What  may  not  a  man  devoted 
to  missions  do  in  the  seven  or  eight  years  of  his  preparatory 
studies?  The  greater  part  of  the  influence  which  Samuel  J. 
Mills  exerted  directly  upon  foreign  missions,  and  which  has 
given  him  an  imperishable  name  in  our  churches,  he  exerted 
while  in  the  college  and  seminary.  He  decided  on  his  duty 
to  the  heathen  before  entering  college — imparted  the  noble 
design,  which  the  Spirit  of  God  had  implanted  in  his  own 
bosom,  to  the  kindred  minds  of  Hall  and  Richards,  whose 
dust  now  rests  beneath  the  sods  of  India — and,  after  seeking 
divine  direction  many  times  on  the  banks  of  the  Hoosack, 
formed  a  society,  in  which  the  members  pledge  themselves 
to  effect,  in  their  own  persons,  a  mission  among  the  heathen. 
Here  was  the  germ  of  our  foreign  missions,  and  it  was  the 
fruit  of  an  early  decision.  Had  Mills,  and  Hall,  and  Richards, 
and  Fisk,  and  others  who  might  be  named,  deferred  all  con- 
sideration of  the  subject  till  they  were  on  the  point  of  enter- 
ing the  ministry,  what  a  loss  would  the  cause  have  sus- 
tained! 

4.  An  early  decision  in  favor  of  becoming  a  missionary  to 
the  heathen  makes  a  man  more  courageous  and  cheerful  when 
in  the  field  of  missions.  ...  He  had  long  before  taken  time 
to  lay  a  broad  and  deep  foundation,  and  his  superstructure 
stands.  He  went  to  the  heathen  from  no  sudden  impulse  of 
passion,  but  from  a  long-revolved  conviction  of  duty,  to  which 
the  feelings  of  his  heart  and  the  habits  of  his  mind  gradually 
came  into  sweet  subserviency.  Till  that  conviction  is  de- 
stroyed he  will  find  delight  in  his  work,  and,  on  the  whole, 
will  be  contented  and  happy.  To  have  this  conviction  of 
duty  well  rooted  in  the  mind,  when  the  missionary  is  in  the 
midst  of  disheartening  trials  with  few  outward  supports, 
is  of  itself  a  sufficient  reason  for  beginning  early  to  look 

[249] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

seriously  at  the  subject,  and,  indeed,  for  looking  at  it  with 
reference  to  a  speedy  decision. 

5.  An  early  consecration  to  the  missionary  work  will 
render  a  man  more  efficient  and  useful  as  a  missionary.  .  .  . 
Ideas  of  all  sorts,  as  they  enter  his  mind,  are  marshaled  and 
trained  for  the  spiritual  and  holy  wars  of  foreign  conquest. 
I  cannot  conceive  of  a  more  desirable  influence;  nor  can  I 
help  regretting  that  it  cannot  always  be  felt  through  the  whole 
course  of  that  man's  education,  who  is  destined  to  become  a 
missionary  in  pagan  lands. 

I  shall  not  do  justice  to  this  subject  unless  I  mention  the 
influence  which  an  early  decision  to  be  a  missionary  may  be 
expected  to  have  upon  the  heart. 

6.  An  early  decision  to  be  a  missionary  will  be  no  disad- 
vantage to  a  man  who  is  providentially  prevented  from 
becoming  one.  It  will  rather  be  an  advantage.  Some  of  the 
most  devoted  ministers  in  our  churches  once  had  a  foreign 
mission  in  view  for  a  considerable  period  of  time.  They  did 
not  go  because  unforeseen  and  unavoidable  occurrences  pre- 
vented, making  it  necessary  for  them  to  remain  in  their  own 
country.  They  lost  no  character  by  so  doing  because  it  was 
manifestly  their  duty  to  relinquish  their  purpose.  Neither 
did  the  "  God  of  all  grace  "  forsake  them.  They  were  enabled 
to  carry  their  missionary  fervor  into  their  parishes. 

7.  An  early  and  serious  consideration  of  this  subject, 
with  a  view  to  a  speedy  decision,  either  that  it  is  or  is  not  our 
duty  to  become  missionaries,  with  an  occasional  reconsidera- 
tion of  the  subject,  is  the  most  likely  way  of  avoiding  mis- 
takes in  regard  to  our  proper  sphere  of  labor. 

These  arguments  he  developed  fully  and  with  con- 
vincing power,  and  followed  them  with  the  question, 
"Whether  there  are  not  many,  well  qualified  to  be 
missionaries,  who  have  more  fear  lest  they  should  go 
without  being  sent,  than  they  have  lest  they  shall 
stay  at  home  when  they  are  commanded  to  go?"  He 
writes: 

[250] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

To  them  I  would  put  the  question,  Whether  the  greatest 
danger  is  not  the  other  way?  Does  not  the  tide  of  feeling, 
in  the  great  body  of  our  pious  students,  set  against  the  life 
of  a  foreign  missionary?  Far  be  it  from  me  to  intimate  that 
there  is  no  danger  of  a  man's  mistaking  the  field  of  his  duty 
when  he  decides  to  become  a  missionary.  Such  mistakes 
have  been  committed,  and  have  had  a  most  unhappy  in- 
fluence; and  the  inquiry  should  be  approached  with  a  godly 
jealousy  of  our  motives,  and  with  humble  prayer  for  the 
illuminations  of  the  Spirit.  But  I  insist  that,  taking  into 
view  the  whole  body  of  young  men  preparing  for  the  min- 
istry, the  paramount  danger  is  that  a  man  will  give  undue 
force  to  the  reasons  in  favor  of  spending  his  life  in  his  own 
country. 

He  concluded  his  tract  with  a  cautious  statement  of 
the  advantage,  which  we  know  to  be  so  great,  of  a 
clear  and  simple  declaration  of  the  missionary  purpose 
under  the  will  of  God. 

In  this  tract  he  was  not  setting  forth  the  reasons  for 
becoming  a  foreign  missionary,  but  only  the  advan- 
tages of  deciding  the  question  early.  He  took  up  the 
argument  for  a  favorable  decision  in  another  tract 
entitled,  ''Ought  I  to  Become  a  Missionary?"  Then, 
as  now,  such  an  argument  became  in  a  large  measure 
an  answer  to  the  objections  made  by  men  to  the 
appeal  of  the  work  for  reenforcements.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  note  that  he  had  to  begin,  as  we  do  still, 
with  a  refutation  of  the  idea  that  some  kind  of  special 
supernatural  call  is  necessary.  He  disputes  this  idea, 
holding  that  such  a  thaumaturgical  call  is  no  more 
necessary  for  missionary  service  than  it  is  for  conver- 
sion, and  that  a  decision  in  this  matter  is  to  be  reached 
in  just  the  same  manner  as  we  decide  as  Christian 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

men  any  other  question.  On  the  basis  of  a  full  and 
candid  examination  of  all  the  facts  we  are  to  deter- 
mine rationally  and  prayerfully  what  our  duty  is. 
The  absence  of  a  strong  desire  for  the  work  of  missions 
or  even  a  decided  aversion  to  it  is  no  justification  for 
staying  at  home,  for,  as  he  says: 

That  the  Church  has  failed  in  the  discharge  of  her  high  re- 
sponsibilities must  be  evident  to  everyone  who  inspects  for 
a  moment  the  broad  command  of  the  Saviour;  and  yet, 
doubtless,  she  has  acted  according  to  her  inclinations.  Surely, 
in  her  case,  the  want  of  a  desire  to  do  her  duty  to  the  heathen 
cannot  be  construed  into  an  expression  of  the  mind  of  the 
Spirit  of  God.  In  Scotland  alone  there  were,  a  few  years 
ago,  not  less  than  one  thousand  educated  ministers  without 
charges — many  of  them,  employed  as  farmers,  and  many  of 
them  as  common  parish  schoolmasters — waiting  for  the 
removal  of  the  present  incumbents,  that  they  might  succeed 
to  their  livings.  Can  it  be  possible  that  not  a  single  one 
of  this  vast  number  of  useless  ministers  should  have  gone  to 
point  the  heathen  to  the  way  which  leads  to  everlasting 
life  and  glory?  And  though  one  stirring  appeal  after  another 
was  made  by  the  Scottish  Missionary  Society  for  laborers 
in  the  Lord's  vineyard,  yet  not  one  of  this  class  volunteered. 
Let  no  one,  therefore,  conclude,  simply  because  he  has  not 
an  ardent  desire  for  the  work,  that  the  question  is  settled 
that  it  cannot  be  his  duty  to  go.  It  may  or  it  may  not  be  so. 
There  is  a  very  great  danger  in  making  our  feelings  and  our 
desires  a  test  of  our  duty,  especially  in  a  service  which  re- 
quires much  self-denial.  This  must  be  perfectly  obvious  to 
everyone  who  is  experimentally  acquainted  with  the  de- 
ceitful workings  of  the  human  heart.  It  is  demonstrated  by 
the  history  of  the  Church  ever  since  the  days  of  the  apostles. 

The  great  trouble  with  men  is,  as  he  holds,  that  they 
have  a  stong  bias  for  staying  at  home  and  that  they 

[252] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

assume  that  they  do  not  require,  to  justify  their  doing 
so,  the  same  kind  of  warrant  which  they  demand  as 
the  condition  of  their  going  abroad.  Men  ought  to 
lay  aside  all  bias  either  way  and  go  where  they  can 
do  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  good. 

''They  have  no  right  to  take  it  for  granted  that,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  we  are  to  labor  at  home  unless  we 
have  some  special  call  to  go  to  the  heathen.  But 
why  should  we  require  all  the  evidence  on  one  side? 
Who  does  not  see  that,  with  these  views  and  feeHngs, 
it  is  impossible  to  investigate  and  decide  the  question 
with  entire  impartiality;  because,  when  the  mind  has 
once  adopted  an  opinion,  it  requires  far  more  evidence 
to  change  it,  if  erroneous,  than  to  direct  it  to  the 
truth,  had  the  judgment  been  suspended.  But  why, 
we  ask  again,  is  it  necessary  to  have  a  special  call 
to  India,  or  Burmah,  or  the  Sandwich  Islands,  or  any 
foreign  station,  rather  than  to  the  West  of  our  own 
country?  'The  field  is  the  world.'  The  foreign  and 
domestic  are  but  departments  of  the  same  grand  field. 
Then  why  this  distinction?  If  the  paramount  claims 
of  either  portion  of  the  field  are  to  be  presumed,  should 
not  the  presumption  be  in  favor  of  the  foreign  depart- 
ment? For,  to  say  nothing  of  its  greater  extent  and 
destitution,  the  fact  that  so  many  who  would  gladly 
preach  among  the  Gentiles  the  unsearchable  riches  of 
Christ  are  prevented  by  providential  circumstances 
beyond  their  control,  gives  the  foreign  field  a  pecuHar 
claim  upon  all  who  are  at  liberty  to  enter  it." 

But  some  say  they  cannot  acquire  a  new  language. 
He  answers  that  the  Moravian  missionaries,  many  of 
whom  are  of  ordinary  talents,  succeed,  and  that  for- 

[253] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

eigners  who  come  to  America,  many  of  them  of  in- 
ferior intelHgence,  learn  English,  which  is  a  difficult 
tongue.  Others  argue  that  if  they  went  they  would 
require  funds  which  ought  to  support  abler  men.  But 
the  abler  men,  he  replies,  are  not  obtainable,  and  the 
Church's  resources  are  not  yet  reduced  to  limits 
requiring  such  selection.  Next  he  answers  un- 
flinchingly the  objection,  much  more  forcible  in  those 
days  even  than  now,  that  there  is  so  much  to  do  at 
home.  People  here  have  a  chance  to  hear.  The 
heathen  do  not. 

It  might  be  answered  further  that,  granting  for  a  moment 
all  it  asks,  the  need  of  laborers  at  home  is  as  great  as  abroad — 
and  it  surely  is  not  greater;  for  what  destitution  can  be 
greater  than  that  which  is  total? — then  the  utmost  that  can 
be  fairly  inferred  is,  that  an  equal  number  should  be  dis- 
tributed to  both  fields.  Now,  until  this  be  the  case,  on  your 
own  principles  you  are  bound  to  go.  You  contend  that  the 
need  at  home  is  as  great  as  abroad,  and  therefore  one-half 
ought  conscientiously  to  remain.  It  may  be  answered  that 
the  destitution  abroad  is  at  least  as  great  as  at  home,  and 
therefore  one-half  ought  conscientiously  to  go.  And  this 
obligation  obviously  becomes  the  more  pressing  since  very 
far  from  the  proportion  of  one-half  usually  go.  Now  it  mani- 
festly falls  upon  those  whose  circumstances  will  permit,  and 
who  profess  a  willingness  to  go  wherever  duty  calls,  to  furnish 
this  quota;  since  there  are  enough,  and,  as  yet,  more  than 
enough,  to  supply  the  other  proportion,  whose  physical  quali- 
fications and  domestic  relations  will  compel  them  to  remain. 
They  ought,  therefore,  to  feel  themselves  peculiarly  called 
upon  to  examine  their  duty  in  this  matter. 

Lastly,  he  answers  without  difficulty  the  argument 
that  by  remaining  at  home  a  man  may  arouse  interest 

[^54] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

among  the  home  churches,  and  he  appeals  to  all  those 
who  can  go  to  feel  that  they  are  definitely  and  par- 
ticularly called  to  go,  and  to  face  the  matter  at  once 
and  decide  their  duty. 

To  his  tract  he  appended  "The  Missionary's  Ap- 
peal," beginning: 

What  is  the  matter  with  the  pious  young  men  of  America, 
that  they  will  not  come  up  in  great  numbers  to  our  help? 
Have  they  not  yet  learned  that  the  heathen  have  souls  which 
must  be  lost  forever  unless  saved  by  the  gospel?  Surely  they 
cannot  be  ignorant  on  this  subject.  How  is  it  then  to  be  ac- 
counted for  that  they  can  stand  still  and  see  all  this  spirit- 
ual carnage,  and  not  even  stretch  out  a  finger  to  prevent  it? 


[255] 


II 

How  modern  all  this  is!  These  tracts  were  issued 
sixty  years  ago.  The  identical  objections  are  still 
met  and  the  same  arguments  are  still  pressed,  and 
the  world's  need,  greater  and  more  pressing  than 
ever,  still  calls  to  the  Church  and  still  meets  with 
only  a  partial  and  inadequate  reply.  Why  is  it  so? 
Well,  a  very  common  answer  on  the  part  of  young  men 
in  the  theological  seminaries  is  that  the  foreign  mission 
need  is  general  and  indiscriminate  and  that  the 
needs  at  home  are  specific  and  individual,  and  that 
if  foreign  mission  boards  would  get  the  best  men  and 
enough  men  they  must  present  definite  and  direct 
calls  to  individuals.  Is  this  a  sound  view?  Dr. 
Anderson  and  his  associates  considered  it  and  decided 
in  the  negative.  In  a  careful  paper  on  the  position 
of  the  Board  in  relation  to  missionaries  he  writes: 

The  Board  does  not,  indeed,  extend  a  "call"  to  them,  as 
churches  do  to  those  whom  they  would  have  for  their  pastors. 
This  has  sometimes  been  recommended  as  preferable  to  the 
course  now  pursued.  But  few  missionaries  would  be  ob- 
tained in  this  way.  The  missionary  spirit  has  not  yet  strong 
hold  enough  upon  the  churches,  or  upon  the  colleges  and 
theological  seminaries,  for  the  adoption  of  such  a  plan. 
Were  the  responsibility  to  be  thus  taken  from  students  and 
candidates  for  the  ministry,  and  assumed  by  missionary  in- 
stitutions, the  young  men  in  our  theological  schools  would 
seldom  be  found  in  a  state  of  mind  or  in  circumstances  to  give 
an  affirmative  answer  to  a  "call,"  by  the  time  their  charac- 
ters and  qualifications  should  have  been  sufficiently  developed 
to  warrant  one.     It  is  found  to  be  better  to  lay  the  case  before 

[256] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

all,  and  leave  the  result  to  the  providence  and  grace  of  God. 
Consecration  to  the  foreign  missionary  work  for  life  involves 
a  somewhat  peculiar  experience  of  its  own;  and  the  earlier 
and  more  thoroughly  that  experience  is  wrought  in  the  soul, 
the  better  is  the  prospect  of  continuance  and  usefulness  in 
the  work  of  missions. 

He  saw  also  that  only  those  men  would  endure  the 
strain  of  missionary  life  who  went  to  it  with  the 
deep  consecration  which  Anderson  felt  was  best 
developed  by  early  and  independent  personal  decision. 
Men  who  went  out  under  a  special  call  from  the  Mis- 
sionary Board  would  not  have  the  depth  of  deathless 
attachment  to  the  work  which  alone  could  sustain 
its  trials  and  burdens.  Moreover,  no  special  call 
could  be  real  except  in  form.  It  could  not  convey  to 
the  mind  of  the  student  conditions  which  only  ex- 
perience could  make  him  understand.  If  disappointed, 
he  might  throw  the  responsibility  for  his  presence  on 
the  mission  field  upon  the  Board,  and  feel  justified  in 
abandoning  a  work  which  had  not  been,  because  it 
could  not  be,  accurately  represented  to  him.  Fur- 
thermore, men  attracted  by  special  propositions 
might  be  needed  far  more  for  other  undertakings 
after  reaching  the  field,  which,  under  the  terms  of 
their  call,  they  might  not  be  wilKng  to  assume.  No, 
the  men  needed  for  missions  must  be  men  who  felt 
the  mighty  sway  of  the  ideas  which  blazed  with  undy- 
ing intensity  in  Anderson's  breast,  and  who  went  out, 
not  because  a  board  made  them  a  proposition,  but 
because  the  world  needed  them,  and  go  they  must  in 
the  name  of  Christ. 

Dr.  Anderson  answered  negatively  this  question  of 
[257] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

definite  calls  for  missionaries  on  these  broad  general 
grounds.  But  if  he  had  tried  the  plan  he  could  have 
answered  it  negatively  on  grounds  of  actual  experience. 
We  have  tried  it,  and  the  idea  that  theological  students 
can  be  got  for  the  foreign  field  in  this  way  is  illusory. 
Again  and  again  we  have  taken  entire  senior  classes 
in  the  seminaries  and  approached  each  man  with  a 
definite  call  and  have  not  gotten  one  man  by  this 
method  of  appeal.  We  have  tried  it  with  scores  of 
men  already  in  the  ministry.  I  do  not  say  that  it  has 
never  yielded  a  single  missionary,  for  I  can  name  men 
who  have  gone  in  response  to  such  a  presentation, 
but  the  common  fact  is  that  unless  men  have  faced 
the  question  on  the  broad  general  principles  set  forth 
by  Dr.  Anderson,  and  decided  that  if  God  permits 
they  will  give  their  lives  to  this  massive  and  unique 
need,  special  calls  will  not  secure  them,  and  if  they  do, 
are  not  likely  to  get  from  them  the  same  type  and 
depth  of  service  which  flows  from  the  men  who  had 
formed  such  a  purpose  as  Anderson  urged  men  to 
form  it,  in  his  tract  on  early  decision. 

How  deep  an  impression  Dr.  Anderson  made  upon 
the  smallest  details  of  administration  in  the  American 
Board  is  shown  in  the  Manual  of  the  Board.  Large 
sections  of  it  are  simply  condensations  of  the  points 
in  Dr.  Anderson's  tracts  and  addresses,  and  its 
regulations  are,  of  course,  the  expression  of  the  con- 
victions which  he  held  as  to  mission  pohcy.  One 
section  deals  with  the  qualifications  of  missionaries. 
It  raises  a  high  ideal.  There  are  eleven  paragraphs 
of  qualifications. 

In  his  volume  on  "Foreign  Missions;  Their 
[258] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

Relations  and  Claims,"  one  of  the  first  volumes  of 
missionary  lectures  ever  published  and  still  one  of 
our  best  discussions  of  the  fundamental  principles 
of  the  missionary  enterprise,  he  argued  for  the  neces- 
sity of  a  deep  rootage  of  missionary  character.  He 
says: 

I  have  long  ceased  to  expect  a  foreign  missionary  to  per- 
severe in  his  work  who  does  not  enter  upon  it  as  a  life  of 
faith,  and  with  a  certain  amount  of  physical,  mental  and 
moral  adaptation.  Mere  philosophers  will  not  go  on  such 
missions,  and  mere  philanthropists  would  not  remain  long, 
should  they  happen  to  go.  Impulsive,  unreflecting  piety 
will  give  out  before  the  day  of  embarkation,  or  retire  ere  the 
language  has  been  acquired,  or  the  battle  has  fairly  begun. 
Fine  conceptions  of  the  beautiful  in  social  life,  glowing  ap- 
prehensions of  pastoral  duty,  broad  and  elevated  views  of  the 
nature  and  relations  of  theological  truth,  are  not  sufficient  to 
give  enduring  life  to  the  zeal  of  a  missionary.  Something 
more  than  all  this  is  needed. 


Missionaries  should  go  out,  he  held,  in  this  deep 
and  personal  devotion,  not  because  a  mission  board 
called  them,  but  with  a  spirit  which  would  create  a 
board  to  need  them,  if  none  existed.  The  men  who  y 
contmue  the  enterprise  should  be  of  the  same  stuff 
as  the  men  who  founded  it.  If  men  are  to  go  only 
when  an  estabhshed  agency  gives  them  a  special  call, 
how  could  the  enterprise  ever  have  originated?  It 
followed  from  this  fact  of  the  living,  personal  devotion 
of  the  individual  that  he  did  not  go  out  as  the  employee 
of  the  mission  board.  The  missionary,  he  said,  "goes 
on  his  mission  in  the  discharge  of  his  own  personal 
duty,  because  he  believes  his  Lord  and  Saviour  re- 

[259] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

quires  him  to  go  as  his  servaat  and  ambassador.  He 
does  not  regard  the  churches  or  the  Board  as  prin- 
cipals, but  as  helpers  to  carry  out  the  benevolent  pur- 
pose of  his  own  independent  self-consecration.  A 
mission  is  not  a  contract  between  the  churches  and 
the  missionary." 

His  poHcies  made  provison  for  furloughs,  but  there 
were  no  arrangements  for  regular  furloughs  after  a 
specified  term  of  service.  Each  furlough  must  be 
specially  asked  and  settled  by  itself.  His  counsel 
as  to  a  new  missionary's  farewell  to  his  friends  was: 
^'You  are  probably  to  see  each  other  no  more  in  this 
world.  Leave  them  as  if  such  were  your  expectation." 
They  were  to  meet  in  heaven.  That  expectation 
should  suffice.  This  was  the  spirit  in  which  Carey 
went  out  to  India,  and  he,  indeed,  never  did  return  to 
England.  It  was  a  natural  question  in  the  early 
years  of  the  missionary  enterprise  whether  furloughs 
were  wise  or  not.  Dr.  Charles  Hodge  contributed  an 
interesting  article  to  "The  Princeton  Review"  in 
185 1  on  the  subject,  in  which  he  supported  the  view 
that  missionaries  might  be  justified  in  giving  up  their 
work  permanently  or  in  coming  home  on  furlough; 
but  after  arguing  for  a  policy  of  regular  furloughs  at 
the  end  of  ten  or  twelve  years  he  concluded: 

We  would  lay  down  no  invariable  rule  on  a  subject  of  this 
kind.  Our  feelings  would  prompt  us  rather,  if  on  missionary 
ground,  to  wish  there  to  abide  and  there  to  die.  We  would 
not  condemn  those  who  revisit  this  country;  there  may  be 
good  reasons  for  their  return  apart  from  the  claims  of  health. 
But  to  others  there  may  be  better  reasons  for  their  remain- 
ing at  their  post.  We  would  prefer,  God  wilHng,  to  imitate 
the  example  of  Swartz  and  Carey,  names  venerable  in  the 

[260] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

missionary  history  of  India.  The  latter  spent  more  than 
forty  years  uninterruptedly  at  his  work,  and  a  few  years 
before  his  death  he  wrote  to  his  early  friend,  Dr.  Ryland: 

"I,  however,  never  intended  to  return  to  England  when  I 
left  it;  and  unless  something  very  unexpected  were  to  take 
place  I  certainly  shall  not  do  it.  I  am  fully  convinced  I 
should  meet  with  many  who  would  show  me  the  utmost  kind- 
ness in  their  power,  but  my  heart  is  wedded  to  India;  and 
though  I  am  of  little  use,  I  feel  a  pleasure  in  doing  the  Httle 
I  can,  and  a  very  high  interest  in  the  spiritual  good  of  this 
vast  country,  by  whose  instrumentality  soever  it  is  pro- 
moted." 

The  problems  of  missionary  character  and  rela- 
tionship and  the  questions  of  appointment  and  term 
of  service  are  all  more  or  less  obvious  problems.  They 
give  room  for  diversity  of  opinion,  but  they  require 
sane  opinion.  Dr.  Anderson's  great  merit  was  that 
he  went  beyond  these  matters  and  defined  the  fun- 
damental aim  and  method  of  missions  and  wrought 
out  some  of  the  great  problems  of  missionary  phil- 
osophy which  others  ignored.  As  Dr.  N.  G.  Clark, 
his  successor,  declared  at  his  funeral: 

It  was  a  time  of  beginnings,  of  laying  foundations,  when 
plans  world-wide  were  to  be  organized  and  carried  forward. 
There  was  need  of  a  carefully  developed  method  in  the  con- 
duct of  the  missionary  work;  there  was  need  of  a  strong  will 
and  a  persistent  purpose  to  carry  out  such  a  method,  and  these 
needs  were  suppHed  in  Rufus  Anderson.  Without  any  dis- 
paragement to  the  noble  men  who  have  been  associated  with 
this  work  and  have  now  gone  to  their  rest,  whether  con- 
nected with  the  American  Board  or  with  other  societies,  there 
can  be  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  the  world  owes  to  Dr. 
Anderson  the  reviving  of  the  true  method  of  missionary 
effort  as  illustrated  most  fully  in  The  Acts  of  the  Apostles 

[26.] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

by  the  apostle  Paul.  That  method,  in  short,  is  this:  the  de- 
velopment of  self-supporting,  self-governing,  self-propagating 
churches  of  Christ.  This  one  thought  gives  direction  to  the 
entire  work.  It  determines  the  fields  to  be  occupied,  the 
stations  to  be  taken  and  the  number  of  men  to  be  located 
at  each.  It  prescribes  the  forms  of  labor  they  are  to  adopt, 
sets  Hmits  to  what  may  be  done  in  the  interest  of  education 
and  the  amount  of  aid  that  may  be  given  to  the  native  com- 
munities— and  settles  ultimately  the  hmits  to  missionary 
labor,  when  the  native  churches  are  to  take  up  and  complete 
the  work  begun  by  missionaries. 

This  method  and  the  principles  involved  are  now  the  com- 
mon possession  of  all  missionary  societies  the  world  over. 
They  are  recognized  in  the  plans  adopted  and  in  the  tributes 
paid  to  Dr.  Anderson  in  this  country,  in  Great  Britain,  in 
Germany  and  wherever  missions  are  known. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Dr.  Anderson  was  not  alone 
in  working  out  the  right  solution  of  this  problem. 
Henry  Venn,  the  secretary  of  the  Church  Missionary 
Society,  was  at  work  on  it  at  the  same  time  and 
reaching  the  same  results.  But  each  worked  in  his 
own  field  and  deserves  the  full  measure  of  our  admira- 
tion and  gratitude. 

The  most  complete  statement  of  the  ripened  views 
to  which  Dr.  Anderson's  correspondence  and  study 
and  visitation  of  the  mission  field  brought  him  is 
found  in  the  ''Outlines  of  Mission  Policy"  which  the 
Prudential  Committee  of  the  American  Board  sub- 
mitted to  the  special  committee  of  the  Board  ap- 
pointed to  report  to  the  special  meeting  of  the  Board 
held  in  Albany,  March,  1856,  to  consider  the  questions 
which  had  been  raised  over  Dr.  Anderson's  course  of 
action  in  India  and  Syria  on  his  visit  in  1855.  The 
special  committee  embodied  these  outlines  in  their 

[262] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

report.  The  statement,  which  is  the  best  condensed 
statement  of  mission  poKcy  of  which  I  know,  is  now 
almost  unobtainable  by  the  general  reader,  and  I 
regret  that  limits  of  space  forbid  its  reproduction  here. 

There  are  some  points  in  the  statement,  however, 
which  it  may  be  well  to  single  out  and  discuss: 

I.  As  to  the  fundamental  aim  of  missions,  Ander- 
son saw  clearly  and  declared  firmly  that  we  are  to 
save  men  and  establish  churches,  and  to  do  it  by  evan- 
geHzation.  This  is  simple  and  it  is  apostoKc.  In 
"Foreign  Missions"  Dr.  Anderson  appealed  to  the 
example  of  Paul  in  setting  forth  what  he  believed  to 
be  ''the  true  and  proper  nature  of  a  mission  among  the 
heathen."  The  mission  of  the  apostle  Paul,  he  held, 
embraced  the  following  things: 

1.  The  aim  of  the  apostle  was  to  save  the  souls  of  men. 

2.  The  means  he  employed  for  this  purpose  were  spirit- 
ual; namely,  the  gospel  of  Christ. 

3.  The  power  on  which  he  relied  to  give  efficacy  to  these 
means  was  divine;  namely,  the  promised  aid  of  the  Holy 
Spirit. 

4.  His  success  was  chiefly  in  the  middle  and  poorer  classes 
— the  Christian  influence  ascending  from  thence. 

5.  When  he  had  formed  local  churches,  he  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  ordain  presbyters  over  them,  the  best  he  could  find; 
and  then  to  throw  upon  the  churches,  thus  officered,  the 
responsibilities  of  self-government,  self-support  and  self- 
propagation. 

This  is  simple,  I  repeat — but  it  is  immensely  difficult 
to  adhere  to  this  simple  program  and  to  carry  it  out 
as  Paul  did,  unconfused,  undelayed,  undiverted. 
2.   A  great  merit   of  Anderson's  scheme  was  its 
[263] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

emphasis  on  the  local  church  and  the  native  pastorate. 
In  India  the  American  Board  missions  had  been 
working  for  forty  years  without  putting  a  single 
native  pastor  over  a  church  or,  indeed,  ordaining  a 
single  native  preacher.  There  had  been  the  same  kind 
of  delay  in  the  Sandwich  Islands  and  among  the 
American  Indians.  Dr.  Anderson  saw  that  such  a 
poHcy,  with  its  necessary  accompaniment  of  mission- 
ary pastorates  over  native  churches,  was  fatal.  He 
did  not  claim  the  credit  for  this  discovery.  ''Like 
many  discoveries  in  science,"  he  says,  "it  very  prob- 
able was  reached  by  a  number  of  persons  at  nearly  the 
same  time  and  as  the  result  of  a  common  experience." 
He  cites  in  a  footnote  a  letter  of  Henry  Venn's,  saying 
that  no  vigorous  independent  native  church  can  be 
built  up  under  missionary  pastorates,  and  he  adds  of 
Mr.  Venn,  ''And  no  one  is  better  informed  on  mis- 
sionary subjects."  How  slowly  we  make  progress  in 
this  matter!  There  are  still  mission  stations  which 
have  been  in  existence  forty  years  or  more  without 
real  native  pastorates  over  churches  which  have  been 
carried  so  long  that  they  have  lost,  or  think  that  they 
have  lost,  all  power  to  stand  alone  in  self-support, 
much  less  to  run,  which  is  their  main  mission,  on  the 
errand  of  self -propagation. 

3.  An  interesting  illustration  of  the  absolute  neces- 
sity of  self-propagation  to  Hfe  emerged  in  his  experi- 
ence with  the  Sandwich  Islands,  which  taught  him 
not  only  that  churches  must  spread  the  gospel  in  order 
to  live,  but  that  a  home  missionary  spreading  alone 
is  not  sufficient  to  life.  In  1847  ^^e  Board  was  alarmed 
at  what  "seemed  like  a  threatened  collapse"  of  the 

[264] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

mission.  There  were  several  reasons  for  it,  but  it 
was  soon  found  that  one  influential  cause  was  a 
deficiency  of  religious  stimulus  from  a  foreign  mis- 
sionary duty. 


All  the  islands  had  been  alike  Christianized.  Had  one  of 
them  remained  under  the  influence  of  savage  paganism,  as 
the  whole  had  been — as,  for  instance,  the  island  of  Hawaii — 
then  the  four  Christianized  islands  might  have  been  roused 
to  send  the  gospel  to  the  seventy-five  thousand  benighted 
people  of  Hawaii;  and  they  would  have  had  an  appropriate 
and  interesting  field  near  by  for  their  Christian  activities. 
Whereas,  there  was  no  such  pagan  island  within  less  than 
two  thousand  miles.  To  be  sure,  there  was  very  much  of 
real  home  missionary  work  on  each  of  the  Sandwich  Islands. 
But  it  was  found  there,  as  it  has  been  in  our  own  country, 
that  the  motive  power  of  the  home  missionary  plea  alone  is 
not  of  itself  sufficiently  awakening  and  powerful.  In  short, 
it  was  painfully  certain  that  the  infant  churches  on  those 
islands,  regarded  as  a  whole,  could  not  be  raised  to  the  level 
of  enduring  and  effective  working  churches  without  a  stronger 
rehgious  influence  than  could  be  brought  to  act  upon  them 
from  within  their  own  Christianized  islands.  .  .  . 

It  was  precisely  this  discovery — for  discovery  it  was — 
which  gave  rise  to  the  mission  to  Micronesia,  a  group  of  islands 
two  thousand  miles  westward;  and  also  to  the  sending  from 
this  country,  in  the  year  1856,  of  the  missionary  packet, 
"Morning  Star,"  to  facilitate  the  forming  of  that  mission; 
and  to  the  employment  of  native  Hawaiians  as  missionaries 
on  those  islands,  who  should  look  for  their  support  to  their 
own  Hawaiian  churches.  .  .  . 

It  is  impossible  for  mission  churches  to  reach  their  highest 
and  truest  state  without  the  aid  of  what  is  to  them  virtually 
a  foreign  mission — without  some  outside  field  of  labor  for 
them,  resembling  the  "hole  of  the  pit"  from  which  they  had 
themselves  been  digged. 

[265] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

There  is  a  perennial  lesson  here  for  the  Christian 
Church  in  all  lands. 

4.  It  is  clear,  from  reading  the  missionary  literature 
of  Anderson's  time,  that  men  were  adjusting  and  re- 
adjusting in  their  minds  the  relations  of  missions  to 
civiHzation,  of  the  individual  to  the  social  statement 
of  the  gospel.  It  is  not  easy  to  characterize  with 
absolute  accuracy  the  emphasis  of  thought  at  the 
beginnings  of  modern  missions,  for  at  every  stage  it  is 
possible  to  quote  authorities  on  each  side,  but  at  the 
outset  there  was  undoubtedly  a  strong  emphasis  on 
the  purely  spiritual  character  of  missions;  as  Ander- 
son would  have  termed  it,  on  the  need  of  preaching 
Christ  as  the  Saviour  of  the  soul  to  individual  men 
that  they  might  be  saved  from  death;  and  yet  even 
then  missionaries  spoke  constantly  of  the  awful  social 
and  moral  wrongs  which  must  be  righted  and  of  the 
new  society  which  must  be  estabhshed.  Under 
Evarts,  as  we  have  already  seen,  perhaps  the  social 
and  political  aspects  of  missions  had  been  specially 
stressed.  At  any  rate,  it  is  clear  that  Dr.  Anderson 
felt  called  upon  to  discriminate  between  missions  and 
civilization,  between  the  direct  preaching  of  Christ 
and  the  spread  of  social  principles.  In  the  former  he 
found  the  vital  missionary  motive,  the  valid  mission- 
ary aim  and  the  effective  missionary  method. 

He  found  in  it  the  vital  motive.  In  a  tract  on 
"The  Office  and  Work  of  the  Missionary  to  the 
Heathen,"  he  says: 

For  objects  that  are  not  spiritual  men  will  seldom  renounce 
the  world  for  themselves  and  their  families,  as  missionaries 
must  do.   .   .   .     Nothing  but  the  grand  object  of  reconcihng 

[266] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

men  to  God,  with  a  view  to  their  eternal  salvation  and  the 
happiness  and  glory  thus  resulting  to  Christ's  kingdom,  will 
call  any  considerable  number  of  missionaries  into  the  foreign 
field  and  keep  them  cheerfully  there. 


The  only  motive  which  can  adequately  sustain  the 
missionary  movement  with  financial  support  is  the 
same  motive  which  can  lead  men  to  give  their  lives 
to  it. 

In  the  direct  preaching  of  Christ  Dr.  Anderson 
found  also  the  vital  missionary  aim.  He  pointed  out 
the  difficulty  which  we  have  in  discerning  the  purely 
spiritual  nature  of  the  missionary  work  because  of 
the  higher  civilization  of  the  Christian  Church,  as 
compared  with  that  of  modern  heathen  nations.  He 
says: 

This  has  tended  to  confuse  our  conceptions  of  the  religion 
we  were  to  propagate.  Our  idea  of  the  Christian  religion 
from  our  childhood  has  been  identified  with  education,  social 
order  and  a  certain  correctness  of  morals  and  manners;  in 
other  words,  with  civilization.  It  is  even  true  of  us  all  that 
the  civilization  of  centuries  forms  a  part  of  the  hourly  mani- 
festations of  our  piety;  and  we  seldom  reflect  how  our  personal 
religion  would  appear  to  casual  observers  were  we  divested 
of  a  culture  which  we  share  in  common  with  the  world  around 
us. 

This  composite  idea  of  the  gospel,  if  I  may  so  describe  it, 
this  foreign  intermixture,  has  placed  the  missionaries  of  our 
day  under  a  disadvantage  as  compared  with  missionaries 
in  the  apostoHc  age.  It  has  weakened  their  faith  in  that 
perfectly  simple  form  of  the  gospel  as  a  converting  agency  in 
which  it  was  apprehended  by  the  apostles;  and  also  their 
rehance  on  the  divine  power,  upon  which  the  apostles  so 
exclusively  depended  for  success. 

[267] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Dr.  Anderson's  writings  are  full  of  references  to  this 
matter  of  the  relation  of  religion  to  social  and  eco- 
nomic improvement.  He  recognizes  clearly  the  certain 
issue  of  true  religious  work  in  better  civilization. 
This  result  he  appeals  to  as  a  consideration  of  great 
apologetic  value,  and  at  times  he  views  it  as  a  motive 
for  supporting  the  purely  spiritual  work,  which  alone 
can  3deld  such  results,  but  he  holds  steadfastly  to  the 
direct  work  of  preaching  and  teaching  Christ  as  the 
primary  missionary  service.  At  the  annual  meeting 
of  the  Board  in  Brooklyn  in  1845  the  following  prin- 
ciples, which  no  doubt  he  drafted,  were  unanimously 
adopted  by  a  yea  and  nay  vote.  They  are  part  of  a 
fuller  statement: 

The  primary  object  aimed  at  in  missions  should  be  to 
bring  men  to  a  saving  knowledge  of  Christ  by  making  known 
to  them  the  way  of  salvation  through  his  cross.  It  has  regard 
to  individual  character,  and  is  an  object  simple  in  itself  and 
purely  spiritual.  The  commission  given  by  Christ  evidently 
contemplates  the  work  to  be  done  as  one  that  is  to  be  wrought 
in  individual  men,  regarded  as  rational  and  immortal  beings; 
all  of  whom,  of  every  grade  and  condition,  having  great  in- 
terests alike,  the  more  important  of  which  lie  in  another  state 
of  existence.  To  these  interests,  primarily  and  mainly,  and 
to  that  change  of  individual  character  and  conduct  which  is 
indispensable  to  secure  them,  the  Christian  missionary  is  to 
direct  his  labors.  If  other  objects  less  spiritual  and  import- 
ant are  connected  with  the  enterprise  as  predominant  ob- 
jects of  interest  and  pursuit,  they  impair  its  efi&ciency  and 
endanger  the  great  result.  .  .  . 

Civil  and  religious  liberty,  improvement  in  civihzation  and 
the  arts  of  life  and  the  introduction  of  the  best  social  insti- 
tutions, admitted  to  be  indispensable  to  the  highest  well-being 
of  a  community,  are  still  secondary  to  the  one  primary  object 

[268] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

of  securing  holiness  in  the  hearts  of  individuals.  Aiming 
steadily  at  this  is  the  way  for  the  missionary  most  surely 
and  speedily  to  work  out  the  others;  and  it  is  only  by  regard- 
ing these  classes  of  objects  in  their  proper  relations,  and 
keeping  them  in  their  proper  places  and  pursuing  them  in 
their  proper  order,  that  either  can  be  effectually  attained 
and  permanently  established  on  the  broad  field  of  the  world. 


[269] 


Ill 

As  this  direct  spiritual  principle  in  his  view  sup- 
plied the  motive  and  should  direct  the  aim,  so,  he  held, 
it  should  prescribe  the  method  of  missions.  He  held 
the  New  Testament  view  of  the  supremacy  of  preach- 
ing, not  confining  the  term,  of  course,  to  our  modern 
notion  of  it,  but  retaining  the  New  Testament  concep- 
tion of  conversational,  persuasive,  continuous  evan- 
gelism. 

He  believed  thoroughly  in  education.  How  could 
he,  who  was  himself  a  man  of  the  highest  intellectual 
training  and  power,  do  otherwise?  He  believed  in 
a  redeemed  human  society  as  well  as  in  converted 
souls,  but  what  we  call  "social  service"  to-day  was 
to  him  an  unknown  thing,  that  is,  the  work  of  human 
uplifting  separated  from  the  cross  of  Christ.  I  sup- 
pose that  there  was  practically  none  of  it  then  so 
separated.  To-day  there  is  a  great  deal  of  it  which  is 
nominally  so  separated,  and  the  question  which  has 
long  been  before  the  home  Church  and  is  beginning 
to  arise  in  connection  with  foreign  missions  is  whether 
the  connection  of  such  service  with  Christ,  as  the 
New  Testament  represents  him,  is  of  vital  conse- 
quence or  not;  whether,  after  all,  such  service  nomi- 
nally separated  from  Christ  is  not  an  untruth,  if  not 
as  guilty,  at  least  as  real,  as  the  mere  word  of  faith 
without  the  power  of  love.  A  Christianity  which  is 
not  service  is  a  lie,  but  we  dare  to  hold  also  that 
service  without  Christ  is  an  unreality.     It  is  an  un- 

[270] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

reality  because  our  real  service  historically  has  come 
from  him.  It  lives  by  contact  with  him  even  when 
it  disavows  it,  and  it  can  only  accomplish  any  deep  and 
living  work  by  his  power,  working  even  where  he  is 
denied. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  just  because  missions  have 
always  been  true  Christianity,  they  have  been  both 
faith  and  love.  Each  mission  station  has  been  a 
* 'social  settlement"  and  has  used  all  the  agencies  of 
helpfubiess  which  the  Church  at  home  did  not  use 
because  for  the  most  part  she  was  providing  them  in 
other  ways  and  not  in  her  own  name.  But  how  could 
the  missionary  keep  from  providing  them?  His  very 
purpose  to  preach  Christ,  which  the  constraint  of 
Christ's  love  had  given  him,  gave  a  meaning  to  preach- 
ing Christ  as  wide  as  the  meaning  of  ''Christ's  love." 

This  is  true  and  it  is  inevitable,  but  even  the  love 
of  Christ  himself  did  not  reheve,  or  try  to  relieve,  all 
the  suffering  it  met  when  he  was  on  the  earth,  and 
Paul,  whose  conceptions  of  corporate  Christian  Hfe 
and  of  social  service  are  still  generations  in  advance 
of  us,  made  not  universal  philanthropy  but  world- 
wide evangelization,  interpreted  by  a  life  of  love,  the 
controlling  purpose  of  all  his  work.  With  such  a  pur- 
pose the  American  Board  had  been  founded.  The 
instructions  given  to  the  first  company  of  mission- 
aries, sent  out  in  1812,  embodied  this  purpose: 

"It  wall  be  your  business  to  bring  the  heathen  as 
directly  as  possible  to  the  knowledge  of  the  truth," 
they  stated,  and  they  added,  "It  is  the  truth,  the 
truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus,  which  is  mighty  through  God 
to. the  pulling  down  of  strongholds." 

[271] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

Under  such  a  purpose  Dr.  Anderson  worked  from 
the  first  day  to  the  last.  Is  that  purpose  both  clear 
and  dominating  with  us? 

The  test  of  missionary  efficiency  is  here.  It  is  not 
to  be  met  by  efficiency  engineers  or  prescriptions,  by 
having  a  stenographer  in  each  station  to  look  after 
correspondence,  and  an  accountant  to  keep  the  books, 
and  an  architect  to  do  the  building,  or  a  superintendent 
of  schools.  These  things  would  not  make  an  efficient 
mission.  A  mission  is  efficient  in  the  proportion  that 
its  missionaries  know  Christ  and  preach  him  by  word 
and  life,  and  reach  efficiently  men,  women  and  chil- 
dren, to  whom  they  bring  Christ.  Efficiency  in  this 
work  cannot  be  measured  by  mechanism  or  by  result, 
but  it  is  to  be  measured  by  spiritual  simpHcity  and 
faithfulness.  Dr.  Anderson  not  only  saw  this,  he 
exemplified  it. 

5.  His  views  on  education  as  a  missionary  agency 
are  set  forth  in  the  statement  of  policy  which  has  been 
mentioned,  but  from  this  statement  one  would  not 
gather  any  adequate  impression  of  the  long  discussion 
which  lay  behind.  He  was  in  favor  of  vernacular 
schools,  but  opposed  to  schools  in  English  for  the 
simple  reason  that  EngKsh  schools  did  not  )deld  satis- 
factory results.  They  did  not  in  India  and  Turkey 
in  his  day  produce  preacher  or  teacher  or  even  Chris- 
tian. The  vernacular  of  any  people  he  held  "to  be 
the  most  suitable  language  in  which  to  communicate 
truth  and  through  which  to  affect  the  heart."  He  had 
sad  experiences,  as  we  have  still,  of  the  fruitlessness 
of  some  types  of  education  to  produce  an  influential 
and  spiritual  Christian  leadership,  and  especially  of  a 

[272] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

leadership  that  will  stay  with  the  people  who  are  to 
be  led.     He  thought: 

The  native  preachers  were  sometimes  too  highly  taught 
in  secular  knowledge  for  the  incipient  stages  of  the  work. 
Raised  too  far  above  the  general  level  of  intelUgence  among 
their  people,  they  longed  for  more  cultivated  hearers  than  they 
found  in  the  villages,  and  for  larger  salaries  than  they  could 
receive,  or  ought  to  receive,  and  shrank  from  pastorates  in 
obscure  places,  among  low-caste,  ignorant  people. 

To  this  day  it  is  the  foreign  missionary  and  not  the 
native  preacher  who  has  to  do  the  pioneer  village  work 
in  Japan  and  India  and  Brazil,  where,  nevertheless, 
there  have  been  schools  for  the  training  of  ministers 
for  a  quarter,  or  a  half,  or  three-quarters  of  a  century. 
The  educational  problem  of  training  men  for  life  and 
not  away  from  Hfe  is  still  an  unsolved  problem  with 
us  in  America.  We  have  made  no  more  mistakes 
on  the  mission  field  than  we  have  made  at  home. 

6.  His  conception  of  the  independent  native  church 
as  the  formative  idea  in  mission  policy  involved  a 
number  of  collateral  convictions.  The  native  church 
should  be  trusted.  It  might  be  morally  immature; 
so  were  Paul's  churches,  and  he  trusted  them.  It 
might  be  weak  and  ignorant,  but  it  would  grow  strong 
and  wise  more  rapidly  if  left  free  and  taught  how 
to  use  its  Hberty,  than  if  carried  and  controlled  by  a 
foreign  body.  Therefore  missionaries  should  not  be 
its  ecclesiastical  overlords  or  administrators.  Let  it 
be  expected  to  bear  its  own  responsibilities.  Let  its 
leaders  be  trained  to  abide  among  their  own  people 
and  not  be  separated  by  their  training  from  the  very 

[273] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

life  they  are  to  lift.  For  this  reason  he  never  favored 
the  revival  of  the  school  in  Cornwall,  Connecticut, 
established  in  1816  and  closed  in  1826,  in  which  the 
experiment  was  made  of  educating  natives  of  the 
mission  fields  for  service  among  their  own  people. 
The  scheme  failed.  The  young  men  were  spoiled 
for  the  work  for  which  they  were  being  trained. 

For  similar  reasons  he  saw  that  the  appointment  of 
natives  of  any  country  as  foreign  missionaries  to  that 
country  was  a  contradiction  and  would  prevent  the 
attainment  of  the  end  of  a  genuine  independent  native 
church.  And  because  such  a  church  must  be  founded 
on  right  principles,  however  imperfect  at  first  its 
attainments  might  be,  he  supported  the  view  of  the 
missionaries  themselves  resolutely  excluding  caste  and 
polygamy  from  the  church. 

Dr.  Anderson  wrote  half-a-dozen  or  more  books, 
histories  of  the  Board's  missions  among  the  oriental 
churches,  in  the  Sandwich  Islands  and  in  India,  the 
Memorial  Volume  in  commemmoration  of  the  Jubilee 
of  the  Board,  and  lectures  and  reports.  It  is  impos- 
sible here  even  to  summarize  the  wealth  of  information 
in  his  writings.  No  one  had  made  at  that  time  a  more 
careful  study  of  the  problem  of  the  oriental  churches 
in  themselves  or  in  their  relation  to  Islam.  Of  the 
non-Christian  religions,  however,  he  seems  not  to  have 
made  any  special  study.  His  references  to  them  show 
how  slight  was  the  actual  acquaintance  of  the  best 
missionary  leaders  with  the  efforts  of  the  human  spirit 
to  deal  in  these  religions  with  the  great  questions  of 
human  life  and  destiny.  His  study  was  of  the 
problems  of  missionary  organization  and  adminis- 

[274] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

stration,  and  here  he  broke  new  ground  and  must 
still  be  counted  as  a  leader  in  advance  of  the  great 
body  of  present-day  students  of  missions.  He  dealt 
with  many  of  the  problems  which  Mr.  Allen  raises  in 
his  troubling  book,  ''Missionary  Methods:  St.  Paul's 
or  Ours."  He  saw  then  as  clearly  as  Mr.  Allen  points 
them  out,  the  overshadowing  influences  of  great 
station  estabhshments  which  make  it  difficult  to  build 
up  under  them  a  truly  independent  and  competent 
local  church,  and  which  also  suffocate  or  suck  the  fife 
out  of  the  village  churches,  or  absorb  all  energies  in 
the  central  station  work  and  leave  none  for  the  de- 
velopment of  country  congregations.  We  are  only 
slowly  waking  to  the  similar  peril  at  home,  discovered 
to  us  now  in  the  decay  of  our  rural  churches. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  with  how  many  of  our 
modern  problems  and  difficulties  Dr.  Anderson  was 
called  upon  to  deal.  He  saw  at  once  the  questions 
of  missionary  comity  and  took  the  highest  and  most 
truly  Christian  view  of  them,  in  spite  of  the  outrageous 
violation  of  true  principles  which  he  and  the  mission 
in  the  Sandwich  Islands  encountered  in  an  invasion 
of  that  field,  accompanied  by  the  most  shameful  mis- 
representations. Problems  of  world  survey  and 
occupation  which  some  regard  as  having  just  emerged 
since  the  Edinburgh  Conference,  he  considered  and 
described  with  such  light  as  was  then  available. 
The  modern  mathematical  calculations  of  world 
evangelization,  not  without  their  value,  are,  in  reality, 
not  modern  at  all.  Gordon  Hall,  "one  of  the  first 
and  ablest  of  the  American  missionaries,"  as  Dr. 
Anderson  had  called  him,  argued  in  his  tract  entitled 

[=75] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

"Claims  of  Six  Hundred  Millions"  that  the  work 
was  to  be  done  by  sending  one  missionary  for  every 
twenty  thousand  souls,  and  supplying  him  with  nine 
native  preachers,  and  he  demonstrated  the  possi- 
bility of  bringing  all  these  missionaries  on  the  ground 
in  twenty-one  years.  ''But,"  says  Anderson,  ''I  have 
ceased  to  place  much  reliance  on  such  calculations. 
Great  results  depending  on  the  providence  and  grace 
of  God  come  about  much  more  easily  and  rapidly 
than  our  previous  calculations  would  lead  us  to 
expect."  That  the  Church  should  adequately  plan 
to  compass  the  task,  however,  he  wholly  beHeved. 
A  living  faith  in  this  as  the  Church's  business  and  in 
the  power  of  God  to  enable  it  to  fulfill  its  duty,  was 
the  thing  for  which  he  unceasingly  prayed  and 
wrought.  He  beHeved  that  there  was  to  be  a  new 
advent  of  the  Spirit,  which  would  pour  new  floods  of 
power  over  the  world,  and  that,  far  from  having  to 
wait  indefinitely  for  this,  the  Church  needed  nothing 
more  than  it  had  "to  cause  it  speedily  to  publish  the 
gospel  through  the  world"  except  "more  wilHngness, 
more  inclination  to  do  what  is  confessedly  its  duty." 
The  very  thing  which  the  Church  is  required  to  do 
"is  to  go  before  the  Spirit  and  prepare  the  way  for 
his  advent."  The  moment  it  sets  forth  in  the  Spirit 
to  possess  the  world,  that  moment  a  new  possession 
of  the  Spirit  will  come  upon  it.  A  new  supernatural- 
ness  will  burst  over  it.  Another  new  problem  which 
his  Kfe  shows  to  have  been  an  old  problem,  although 
it  is  coming  upon  us  now  with  much  more  compHcat- 
ing  result,  is  the  problem  of  fitting  highly  specialized 
men  into  the  requirements  of  a  work  where  a  great 

[276] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

many  general  duties  have  to  be  done,  and  where,  in- 
deed, the  general  evangeHstic  duty  of  all  is,  in  reahty, 
the  very  end  for  which  the  specialized  work  of  each  is 
carried  on.  He  had  the  advantage  of  the  schemes  of 
benevolent  giving  which  Evarts  had  worked  out,  but 
he  had  to  work,  and  with  discouraging  effect,  upon 
the  problem  of  the  Sunday  school  and  the  teaching 
of  missions.  ''I  see  not  how  the  textbooks  in  com- 
mon use,"  he  said,  ''would  be  constructed  differently 
or  the  teaching  be  materially  changed  were  there  no 
missions  in  existence  and  were  there  no  heathen 
world  accessible  to  the  churches."  In  many  churches 
we  should  have  to  say  the  same  thing  to-day,  not  of 
the  Sunday-school  teaching  only,  but  of  all  the  pub- 
lic teaching  and  preaching  of  the  Church. 

So  we  might  go  on  recalling  view  after  view  of  his, 
but  it  must  suffice  to  mention  only  one  more,  now 
pretty  well  accepted,  but  often  denied  even  in  high 
places  in  our  government  within  the  memory  of  all 
of  us:  namely,  the  political  rights  of  an  American 
citizen  who  goes  abroad  as  a  missionary.  Anderson 
stated  with  convincing  clearness  the  argument  that  a 
missionary  did  not  cease  to  be  an  American  by  going 
abroad  on  the  best  errand  on  which  an  American 
citizen  could  be  employed.  The  subject  was  brought 
to  the  notice  of  Daniel  Webster  in  1842,  Webster 
being  then  Secretary  of  State,  and  the  Board's 
missions  in  Turkey  having  just  ground  of  complaint 
against  the  American  Legation  in  Constantinople. 
Webster  promptly  sent  a  peremptory  letter  to  the 
Legation,  requiring  the  treatment  of  missionaries  in 
the,  same  manner  with  other  citizens  of  the  United 

[277] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

States,  and  Edward  Everett  and  Lewis  Cass,  who 
followed  Webster,  took  the  same  view.  It  was  re- 
served for  John  Sherman  to  discriminate  between 
Americans  engaged  in  teaching  and  preaching  and 
healing  and  Americans  engaged  in  trade,  and  to  regard 
the  former  as  employed  in  an  illicit  business  beyond 
the  pale  of  their  government's  recognition.  At  the 
same  time  Anderson  tells  us  that  "the  experience  of 
the  Board" — and  it  is  a  wise  lesson  which  all  of  us 
would  do  well  to  remember — "favors  the  fewest  pos- 
sible direct  communications  by  missionary  societies  to 
national  governments." 

As  one  immerses  himself  in  the  atmosphere  of 
Anderson's  time  and  follows  his  thought  upon  the 
problems  of  his  own  day,  and  then  returns  into  our  own 
time,  he  sees  both  how  much  and  how  Httle  we  have 
advanced.  Anderson  spoke  once  of  the  wonderful 
changes  in  attitude  of  mind  between  his  time  and 
John  Owen's,  when  a  man  of  Owen's  mind  and  power 
could  argue  for  the  incompetence  of  any  agency  or 
person  whatever  to  empower  evangelists  "to  go  up 
and  down  from  one  place  and  nation  unto  another, 
to  preach  the  gospel  unto  Jews  and  Gentiles  as  yet 
unconverted."  Anderson  had  no  trouble  in  finding 
a  warrant  for  such  ordination.  He  spoke  also  of 
changes  in  mental  environment  since  the  founding 
of  the  Board. 

There  were  hardly  facts  enough  then  for  constructing  a 
theory  of  missions  to  any  great  extent;  and  where  the  Board 
did  act,  as  it  must  needs  have  acted  more  or  less,  upon  the 
popular  notions  of  the  times,  it  found  great  occasion  for  sub- 
sequent modifications;  as  in  the  value  of  direct  civilizing 

[^78] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

agencies  in  missions,  the  influence  of  the  higher  education  on 
savage  minds,  and  the  training  of  heathen  youth  amid  the 
civiHzation  of  our  own  country.  But  then  these  experiments 
were  the  way  to  come  at  the  truth,  and  they  led  to  the  more 
correct  experience,  upon  which  the  missions  are  now  being 
prosecuted. 

Just  so  in  many  regards  have  we  moved  on  into  a 
new  mind — perhaps  in  nothing  more  distinctly  than 
in  the  recognition  of  the  long-forgotten  corporate 
conceptions  of  the  New  Testament.  Dr.  Anderson's 
"Manual"  renounced  "the  assumption  that  the  work 
of  publishing  the  gospel  was  committed  by  Christ  to 
the  Church  as  a  society  or  corporate  body."  Instead 
he  stated: 

The  command  was  given  to  individual  disciples,  before 
an  organized  Christian  Church  existed,  and  whatever  use 
was  made  of  social  organizations  during  the  apostolical  age, 
the  work  was  always  regarded  as  the  discharge  of  an  indi- 
vidual and  personal  obligation.  It  is  not  less  an  individual 
and  personal  duty  now  than  it  was  then. 

We  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  truth  of  individual 
responsibiHty  in  this  matter.  Whether  the  Church 
went  with  him  or  not,  Paul  was  bound  to  go  forth 
to  the  unevangelized  world.  But  we  realize  now  that 
there  is  far  more  to  life  and  work,  to  human  influence 
and  achievement,  to  prayer  and  the  kingdom  of  God, 
than  isolated  wills.  We  know  that  there  is  a  great 
corporate  life  back  of  all  persons  and  through  all 
persons,  and  that  all  our  conceptions  must  be  expanded 
to  include  the  body  and  its  Ufe  as  well  as  the  separate 
members  and  their  functions,  which  are  all  parts  of 

[279] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

the  body,  but  which,  taken  altogether,  are  yet  some- 
thing less  than  the  body. 

But,  after  all,  we  have  not  gone  on  as  far  as  we 
might  suppose,  and  in  the  essential  elements  of  true 
missionary  administration  we  shall  all  do  wisely  in 
going  to  school  to  the  wise,  simple,  fearless  man  who 
served  the  American  Board  with  limitless  fideHty 
for  forty-four  years. 

He  was  a  real  missionary  leader.  He  did  not  coerce 
anyone.  He  wielded  no  authority.  He  simply 
thought  for  himself,  and  temperately  and  clearly 
stated  his  conclusions  to  others.  There  must  be  order 
and  discipHne,  but  also  freedom,  for,  he  argued  in  his 
tract,  entitled  ''Control  to  Be  Exercised  Over  Mis- 
sionaries and  Mission  Churches," 

Men  must  be  free,  and  must  feel  that  they  are  free,  in 
order  to  rise  to  the  full  capacity  and  dignity  of  moral  agents, 
and  be  subjected  to  the  full  control  of  law,  reason  and  the 
moral  sense.  And,  of  all  gospel  ministers,  the  missionary 
among  the  heathen  most  needs  to  have  his  mind  and  spirit 
erect,  and  to  feel  that  all  good  men  are  his  brethren.  This 
is  necessary  to  the  unity,  peace,  order  and  efficiency  of  every 
mission.  The  law  of  liberty  is  an  all-pervading  law  in 
Christ's  kingdom. 

The  real  difficulty,  however,  then  as  now,  is  not  so 
much  the  difficulty  of  determining  right  missionary 
theories,  but  how  to  get  the  right  theory  into  prac- 
tice. Even  when  the  ideals  and  aims  of  the  enter- 
prise are  seen,  how  are  methods  to  be  held  in  rigid 
loyalty  to  them?  It  is  so  easy  to  follow  the  lines 
of  least  resistance,  to  keep  up  old  institutions  and  to 
pursue  old  plans  because  their  abandonment  has  in 

[280] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

it  an  element  of  risk,  the  risk  of  leaving  a  measure  of 
fact  in  the  interest  of  a  theory.  Most  men  are  ex- 
ceedingly timid  in  the  matter  of  shaping,  and  espe- 
cially of  altering,  their  actual  methods  of  work  to 
conform  to  theories  whose  reasonableness  they  can- 
not deny.  Anderson  was  not  afraid.  He  believed 
that  what  was  theoretically  right,  and  true  in  prin- 
ciple, was  the  thing  that  ought  actually  to  be  done, 
and  that  it  was  wrong  to  do  anything  else,  and  so  he 
calmly  assumed  and  encouraged  others  to  assume  the 
responsibility  of  doing  right  and  of  desisting  from 
doing  wrong.  He  thought  the  Sandwich  Islands  mis- 
sion had  reached  its  euthanasia,  and  he  accomphshed 
it.  He  held  convictions  regarding  EngKsh  and  ver- 
nacular education  which  he  found  the  missionaries 
in  Turkey  and  India  ready  to  accept,  and  he  led  them 
on  to  act  upon  them  and  to  readjust  their  educational 
work.  General  Armstrong,  many  years  later,  ques- 
tioned the  wisdom  of  this  policy  in  Hawaii,  and  Dr. 
HamHn  his  course  with  regard  to  the  EngHsh  schools. 
But  a  longer  view  will  support  his  theories,  and  we 
must  admire  far  more  a  man  who  may  sometimes  err 
in  the  premature  appHcation  of  his  principles  than 
another  who  escapes  all  danger  of  prematurity  by 
avoiding  all  appHcation.  Surely  one  of  our  great 
needs  to-day  is  for  men  who  will  not  be  dragged  away 
or  intimidated  from  loyalty,  and  from  the  conformity 
of  conduct  to  loyalty  to  pure  spiritual  principles,  by 
the  pressure  of  expediency,  or  compromise,  or  secular- 
ism. 

Dr.  Anderson  not  only  had  the  courage  which  sees 
in  all  truth  a  duty  and  dares  to  do  it.     He  also  had 

[281] 


STUDIES  OF  MISSIONARY  LEADERSHIP 

the  courage  of  expectancy.  He  was  not  a  mere 
timekeeper.  What  had  been  attained  was  not 
merely  to  be  held.  It  was  to  be  advanced  upon. 
Growth  was  unavoidable  and  it  was  indispensable. 
He  wrote  a  paper  on  ''The  Board  Able  to  Conduct 
Missions  on  a  More  Extended  Scale,"  and  another 
on  "The  Essentially  Progressive  Nature  of  Missions 
to  the  Heathen."  Every  new  advance,  he  held, 
called  for  further  progress.  He  planned  and  worked 
in  faith,  a  faith  as  real,  he  held,  for  all  the  care  and 
forethought  of  his  planning,  as  any  other.  ''The 
enterprise  of  the  celebrated  Miiller,  in  England,"  he 
wrote,  "is  often  spoken  of  as  if  it  were  peculiarly  a 
work  of  faith.  It  does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  so  very 
peculiar  in  this  respect.  That  of  the  American 
Board,  in  appropriating  half  a  million  dollars  and  more 
for  an  expenditure,  a  year  before  it  is  received,  is  not 
less  a  work  of  faith."  The  highest  wisdom,  after  all, 
was,  in  his  view,  not  well-instructed  reasoning,  but 
simple  faith.  What  he  said  in  reference  to  Samuel 
Worcester,  the  first  secretary  of  the  Board,  might  be 
said  also  of  him: 

Human  wisdom  is  less  a  matter  of  foreknowledge  than  a 
correct  perception  of  the  present  relations  of  things,  and  a 
simple  conformity  to  the  present  indications  of  Providence. 
It  is  being  correct  in  the  step  next  to  be  taken. 

Another  "step  to  be  taken" — that  was  the  way  he 
was  ever  looking  forward  upon  hfe.  On  the  title-page 
of  one  of  his  books  he  placed  this  resolve  of  the  Board 
in  1835,  "Large  designs,  systematic  and  vigorous 
exertions,  humble  dependence  on   God,   and  entire 

[282] 


RUFUS  ANDERSON 

consecration  to  the  work,  should  characterize  all  our 
enterprises  for  the  salvation  of  the  revolted  world.'' 
If  he  was  borne  on  the  swell  of  such  mighty  impulses, 
if  he  felt  so  richly  the  world  propulsion  of  the  gospel 
and  the  providence  of  God  in  his  day,  shall  we  feel 
it  less?  The  accumulated  responsibiHty  which  he 
urged  upon  his  generation  as  it  compared  its  call  with 
the  Word  which  had  spoken  to  its  fathers — does  not 
that  responsibility  rest  with  a  piled  enormity  upon  us? 
He  uses  the  thought  in  almost  the  same  words  in  two 
of  his  books: 

Our  fathers  of  the  last  century  had  no  such  calls  from 
nations  beyond  the  limits  of  Christendom;  and  they  had  not 
because  those  nations  were  then  comparatively  unknown  or 
else  were  unapproachable.  But  God  has  been  pleased  to  lift 
the  pall  of  death  from  off  the  heathen  world;  to  bring  it  near; 
and  to  fill  our  eyes  with  the  sight  and  our  ears  with  the  cry 
of  their  distress.  He  has  leveled  mountains  and  bridged 
oceans  which  separated  the  benighted  nations  from  us, 
and  made  for  us  a  highway  to  every  land.  To  us  he  says, 
"Go!" — with  an  emphasis  and  a  meaning  such  as  this  com- 
mand never  had  to  ministers  and  Christians  in  former  ages. 

"To  US,"  said  Rufus  Anderson.  And  we  say  with 
Anderson  and,  God  grant,  with  new  resolve,  "To  us. 
To  us." 


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